For 30,987 people in the Republic of Ireland who identify as Irish Travellers, 1 March 2017 was a historic moment. ¹ After a decade-long campaign, ² then Taoiseach Enda Kenny addressed the Dáil, the Irish Parliament, and formally recognised the indigenously Irish yet culturally distinct and traditionally nomadic community as an ethnic minority group.

What had gone before this “momentous decision”, as President Michael D. Higgins’ expressed, ³ were many decades of campaign and activism for Traveller rights and against a social policy that had, until the 1980s and beyond, been largely characterised by a continuous neglect of Traveller identity and Traveller needs. ⁴ It was not until the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, which Ireland ratified in 2000, recommended the recognition of Traveller ethnicity, that cultural identity, ethnicity, and most importantly legislation regarding discriminatory and racist acts against Travellers were discussed more seriously. Early Irish responses to the recommendation tried to get around such recognition in various ways: A first progress report in 2001 argued that the state had already implemented measures that catered for the community in other ways, for instance by adopting a more inclusive attitude towards Traveller-specific needs and increased government spending on Travellers (see McElwee et al. 2003). More definitely, a 2005 report expressed outright denial of Traveller ethnicity based on the argument that there was no proof for ethnic or racial difference between Irish Travellers and the settled population (Government of Ireland 2005). Also, as the 2005 report went on, the consideration of the Irish Travellers as an ethnic group was of no significance, as Irish Travellers were specifically identified as protected by “the key anti-discrimination measures, the Incitement to Hatred Act, 1989, the Unfair Dismissals Acts 1977, the Employment Equality Acts and the Equal Status Acts” (Government of Ireland 2005, p. 38) and the Government was committed to legislative, administrative, and institutional provisions that would protect the rights and improve the situation of Travellers. The UN responded with concern, reiterating their position that a recognition would indeed have important implications in terms of improving the Irish Travellers’ social situation, and requested a revision of the decision (Bond 2006).

Since then, a variety of recent developments, new insights, and pressure from Traveller and other organisations may have led to the government’s change of opinion and a formal recognition of ethnicity in 2017. Not least, recent genetic studies on the Irish Traveller community (Gilbert et al. 2017; Relethford and Crawford 2013; North et al. 2000) confirmed that, despite great heterogeneity within the sample and the Irish Travellers’ undoubted ancestral Irish origin, there were genetic clusters that were occupied by Irish Travellers only, and the study “estimated a divergence time for the Irish Travellers from the settled Irish to be at least 8 generations ago” (Gilbert et al. 2017, p. 9). ⁵ Further, no genetic connection with other European nomadic or Gypsy groups was found, though their cultural identity was described as very similar (Relethford and Crawford 2013). Indeed Irish Travellers share many traditions and values with other nomadic groups, such as the preference of self-employment , birth, marriage and burial customs, and values concerning morality, taboos, and purity (Freese 1980; Pavee Point 2017).

Apart from these scientific insights, several studies into Traveller (mental) health, education, employment , and accommodation (e.g. Watson et al. 2017), as well as a series of events, have led to a growing campaign for Traveller rights in the hope that ethnic recognition would bring positive public policy changes. One of the most tragic events that boosted the campaign was a fire which broke out on a halting site in Carrickmines (South County Dublin) on 10 October 2015, killing five adults and five children. The heated debate that followed not only highlighted the deplorable living conditions of many Traveller families but also the degree of marginalisation, racism, and discrimination Travellers were and are facing, and which became very visible in the racist commentary across traditional and social media as well as in the fierce (and physical) opposition to rehousing the surviving, now homeless Travellers near their estates. ⁶

A number of scholars (Walsh 2008; Ó hAodha 2007a; Hayes 2006; Ní Shuinéar 1994, 2002; Helleiner 2000) have discussed reasons and origins of this degree of animosity and anti-Traveller attitudes in Ireland and elsewhere and see them as concomitant with changing discourses of sedentarism and the rise of the modern nation-states in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as well as with more recent changes of economic relations between Travellers and non-Travellers in an increasingly urbanised country (Ó hAodha 2007a). Specific to the Irish case, “colonial residues” (Walsh 2008, p. 24) and an anxiety in relation to landlessness have been considered as the root of anti-Traveller sentiments. This theory suggests that British colonial practices and discourses of sedentarism aimed, from the sixteenth century onwards, to suppress mobility and “civilise” the Irish, which resulted in a trauma of colonial domination, leading to a projection of “otherness” onto the Traveller community and to a perception of nomadism as a threat to civil society. Especially on the way to the formation of an independent Republic, unity and homogeneity needed to be established discursively as well as institutionally and aberrant behaviour such as mobility not only posed problems to authorities due to a lack of control, but also a threat: processes connected to globalisation and urbanisation have substantially changed the Irish society as a whole as well as former economic relations between Travellers and non-Travellers, and the Travellers’ way of life now more than in previous times challenges new established orders by subverting beliefs about the normalcy of settlement, wage labour, and private property (Walsh 2008). Ensuing responses to this threat were and are policies that seek to control aberrant behaviour and absorb the community into mainstream Irish society (Walsh 2008; Helleiner 2000).

As a result, after decades of governmental and institutional pressures, most Travellers—according to the 2016 Census 83% (Central Statistics Office 2016)—now live in some form of settled accommodation , which has substantially affected many other aspects of the community’s lifestyle. Thus, even though a nomadic mindset—a “different way of perceiving things, a different attitude to accommodation , to work, and to life in general” (McDonagh 1994, p. 95)—continues to characterise the community, Traveller culture has gone through substantial changes, brought about by community external, government-led initiatives with the aim of assimilation, as well as internal developments, manifesting in changing family relations and working patterns. These developments as well as present cultural clashes heavily influence contemporary relations between settled people and Travellers, causing hostility and distrust on both sides (McElwee et al. 2003; Helleiner 2000).

In midst of this environment, the Irish Traveller Cant is a substantial feature of the community’...