politics of mobility and new age travellers

Ruth [email protected]

THE POLITICS OF MOBILITY: A LITERATURE REVIEW________________________________________________________________

“Mobility is central to what it is to be human … Culture, we are told, no longer sits in places, but is hybrid, dynamic – more about routes than roots”

Tim Cresswell, 2006:1

“Nowadays we are all on the move”Zygmunt

Bauman, 1998a:77

Mobility may be considered as central to ideas and practices of

modern or, if you prefer, post-modern Western societies. Both

Bauman and Cresswell, in the above quotes, are referring to

our current propensity for travel, whether this is in a physical

sense or via the internet and cable TV, but they also refer to

what Cresswell (2001; 2006) terms a ‘metaphysics’ of mobility.

That is to say, an understanding of and relationship to the

world which is couched in terms of time, space and distance.

Whether we ‘stroll down memory lane’, get ‘stuck in a rut’, ‘go

the distance’ or ‘fall at the first hurdle’, metaphors of mobility

orientate us to the world in much the same ways as metaphors

of ‘place’ do (Cresswell, 2004).

Ruth Phillips 1 31st October 2008

mailto:[email protected]

Mobility, then, permeates our culture, yet its very ubiquity

makes it somehow ‘unseen’ and ‘natural’, thus able to conceal

powerful ideologies (Cresswell, 2006:22) and this alone should

demand attention. The very term ‘mobility’, as opposed to

‘movement’, is loaded with socially-produced meaning

(Cresswell, 2006:3) and is thus inherently political. In fact, were

it not for a desire to foreground the notion, it would almost be

ridiculous to speak of a ‘politics of mobility’, for mobility can

hardly be apolitical, either in practical or representational

senses.

Cresswell (2006) draws our attention to the conflicting

representations of “mobility as progress, as freedom, as

opportunity, and as modernity, sit[ting] side by side with

mobility as shiftless, as deviance and as resistance” (2006:2).

Thus, certain forms of mobility – commuting to work, foreign

holidays, student gap years – are positively encouraged, whilst

others – hitchhiking, tramping, nomadic lifestyles - are frowned

upon, at best, and criminalized at worst. Bauman (1998a;

1998b), on the other hand, focuses on the stratification of our

consumer society where

Those ‘high up’ are satisfied that they travel through life by their heart’s desire and pick and choose their destinations according to the joys they offer. Those ‘low down’ happen time and again to be thrown out from the site they would rather stay in (Bauman, 1998a:86).

Mobility, according to Bauman (1998b:39), is one of the

freedoms demanded by the consumer in his or her quest to

eradicate the boredom which is the antithesis of all that

consumer society stands for. Yet, as he points out,


Common remedies against boredom are not accessible to those in poverty, while all unusual, irregular or innovative counter-measures are bound to be classified as illegitimate and bring upon their users the punitive powers of the defenders of law and order (Bauman, 1998b:39).

Hitchhikers, Tramps, Gypsies and New Age Travellers can all be

seen to have employed ‘unusual, irregular or innovative

counter-measures’ to achieve mobility, and have been cast as

‘outsiders’ in our society. Examining such outsider groups can

tell us a great deal about the dominant culture (Cresswell,

1996:9; Sibley, 1981:4) and may provide an opportunity to

make visible the politics of mobility.

The transgression these outsider groups have committed

(Cresswell, 2004:103) highlights a paradox whereby

The social ‘other’ of the marginal and of low cultures is despised and reviled in the official discourse of dominant culture and central power while at the same time being constitutive of the imaginary and emotional repertoires of this dominant culture (Shields, 1991:5).

In other words, these outsider groups embody the ideology of

mobility which is at the heart of modern society, whilst at the

same time representing a threat to society by the very practice

of that mobility (Cresswell, 2001:14).

Perhaps the key word here is ‘threat’ – there is certainly a

consensus, running throughout the literature, that nomadic

groups have been perceived as a serious threat to society in

some form or another. This much is clear from all the legislation


which has been introduced over the years to deal with the

Traveller ‘problem’ and which, in the UK, stretches back to the

early 16th century (Okely, 1983:1) and culminates, most

recently, in the Criminal Justice and Public Order Bill in 1994.

Whether the threat is analysed psychologically (Bauman,

1998a; Hetherington, 2000; Sibley, 1995), politically (Halfacree,

1996; Okely, 1983; Rojek, 1988) or spatially (Cresswell, 1996,

2006; Sibley, 1999), it is nothing new. Travelling people have

demonstrated remarkable persistence and continuity (Sibley,

1986) in the face of both personal and cultural persecution

(Okely, 1983) and have become one of those recurring moral

panics which were hinted at by Stanley Cohen (1980:9).

Cohen’s (1980) model suggests that a moral panic is created

when a deviant group draws a reaction from the public. The

deviance, exaggerated in the media, becomes an issue of

public concern and this leads to further deviance and still

greater concern. Ultimately, legislation is introduced to deal

with the deviant group. Chris Rojek (1988:28-29) argues that

the concept of moral panics cannot be applied to New Age

Travellers because of its “annual regularity”, but I would argue

that this ‘annual regularity’ only represented a seasonal high-

pitch to the societal reaction. Rojek was writing in 1988 and can

thus be forgiven for not seeing the bigger picture: legislation,

which effectively outlawed the Travellers way of life (Martin,

2002:724), was finally introduced in 1994. It is interesting to

note that academic literature pertaining to travellers peaked in

the late 1990’s with the introduction and aftermath of the


Criminal Justice and Public Order Bill, and has petered out in

recent years. This also coincides with an apparent peak and

decline in media coverage and, perhaps, a popular perception

that the ‘problem’ has disappeared. However, on examining the

history of Gypsies (Okely, 1983), Tramps (Cresswell, 2001) and

other nomadic cultures there appears to be a pattern of

recurring moral panics, over a long period of time, usually

resulting in legislation against these outsider groups.

Travellers, of one kind or another, are folk devils who just

refuse to disappear!

New Age Travellers are often categorized as separate and

distinct from Gypsies, not least by Gypsies themselves (cited by

Levinson & Sparkes, 2004:720) and certainly in terms of

government policy (Wilkin, 1998). Nonetheless, studies of

Gypsies provide a useful starting point and actually highlight a

number of similarities. Some of the earliest ethnographic

studies of Gypsies by social scientists are contained in Farnham

Rehfisch’s 1975 collection, Gypsies, Tinkers and Other

Travellers, which attempts to overcome a previous lack of

“reliable studies on their social structure and social

organization” (1975:Preface). Yet accounts contained here still

hold descriptions of travellers as ‘pariahs’ and ‘parasites’

(Barth, 1975:287). Okely (1983) and Sibley (1981) have both

produced ethnographic studies which successfully address this

attitude by relating the Gypsy culture to the dominant culture

of which it is, in fact, a part (Okely, 1983:30), and by

highlighting the ethnocentricity of both popular and academic

(mis)understandings of Gypsy culture (Okely, 1883:33; Sibley,


1981:23-24). I would, however, repudiate the importance of

race as a factor in the Gypsies status as ‘other’ (Sibley,

1981:29). Levinson and Sparkes (2004:710) discuss the

“nomadic mindset” of Gypsies whereby

Travelling often remains integral to the Gypsy sense of identity even when the amount of travelling achieved seems to constitute little more than ‘holidays’(2004:710)

That this mindset is also claimed by New Age Travellers (see,

for example, Lowe & Shaw, 1993:218-243) contradicts the

widely held view “that travelling was ‘in the blood’, the only

explanation for which is Gypsy ancestry” (Levinson & Sparkes,

2004:711).

The majority of New Age Travellers were not born on the road

since this movement only emerged in the 1970s and there are

differing views, not about the history of these origins but

certainly about the causes. Kevin Hetherington’s (2000) study

of New Age Travellers clearly identifies the travellers as having

chosen this way of life (eg, 2000:6) yet this is misleading and

his account, whilst providing a thorough history (2000:1-29),

fails to adequately locate this within the social context of

Britain in the 1970s and 80s. Ultimately, then, he presents a

picture of New Age Travellers which has been criticized by Greg

Martin (2002:724) as overly romantic and voluntaristic. I would

add to Martin’s (2002) critique that Hetherington takes Sibley’s

(1995) use of psychoanalytical theory (Rodway, 2004:259) a

little too far in, for example, positioning Travellers as the

‘stranger’ being “symbolically sacrificed so that social order


may be renewed” (2000:23). Whilst Hetherington’s account

may be a little too esoteric (Martin, 2002:728), that is not to

say that a consideration of the psychological role of the ‘other’

is not useful.

Bauman’s (1998a) discussion of ‘the tourist and the vagabond’

– which may usefully be seen as Weberian ‘ideal types’ – posits

the vagabond as the tourist’s “inner demon”, not because of

what the vagabond is, but because of what the tourist could

become, yet he still maintains a practical orientation:

While sweeping the vagabond under the carpet – banning the beggar and the homeless from the street, confining him [sic] to a far-away, ‘no-go’ ghetto, demanding his exile or incarceration – the tourist desperately, though in the last account vainly, seeks the deportation of his own fears (1998a:97)

Referring to an article in the Daily Telegraph (1986) in which a

group of New Age Travellers are said to be “soiling” an area of

the New Forest, Cresswell (1996:83) makes the same kind of

link between the physical actuality and the psychological effect:

The residents are homeowners and settled, and the holidaymakers are engaging in legitimate forms of travel and will eventually return to a home and a job. The ‘hippies’, however, are clearly ‘deviant’ in their nonsettled lifestyle, and thus they soil normality (my italics).

The notion of the ‘other’, of ‘difference’, is often linked to ideas

about dirt and disease (Cresswell, 1996:81; Sibley, 1995:106),

and the mobile other represents a further threat to the spatial

organization of society (Cresswell, 1996:87; Sibley, 1999:139).

Cresswell (2006:17), citing James Scott (1998), describes how


modernity always involved the imposition of spatial order onto

chaotic nature, hence the anxiety that mobile people provoke.

Others have gone further, suggesting that the presence of the

‘other’ exposes fundamental deficiencies in modern society

(Halfacree, 1996:44; Okely, 1983:2) so that, as Hetherington

(2000:18) states, “it is not that the stranger brings disorder but

that he or she reveals order to always be a process rather than

a thing”. These fears become myths in the popular imagination:

Tramps, Gypsies and Travellers are soap-dodgers; they are idle

and work-shy; they have no respect for private property (for

refutation of these myths see Davis et al, 1994, and Webster &

Millar, 2001).

A common myth, of the ‘rural’ and/or ‘real’ Gypsy, is explored

by both Okely (1983) and Sibley (1981) yet, unfortunately,

these are distinctions which continue to be applied in

comparing Gypsies (real nomads) to New Age Travellers

(deviants) – eg: Government policies, cited by Wilkin

(1998:115) – as well as between early New Age Travellers (real

travellers) and the later arrivals to the scene (deviants) – eg:

Hetherington (2000). Sibley (1995:102) describes the “enduring

stereotypes of Gypsies … as a constituent part of the rural

scene” and goes on to state that

Stereotypes often include elements of place so that discrepancy or acceptance depend on the degree to which a group stereotype matches the place in which it is located (1995:102)

Whilst it may be extending the point slightly to suggest that

Gypsies will actually find ‘acceptance’ in rural places, it is no


great surprise that Wilkin’s (1998) empirical study of council

policies for Travellers found that rural areas have better

provision. Urban Gypsies are seen as doubly-deviant since their

stereotypes are simply not located in urban places, and little

provision is made for them here (Wilkin, 1998). There is plenty

of historical evidence to show that Gypsies have always had a

connection to urban areas (Okely, 1983:30), yet the rural myth

has persisted, not only as a “yardstick against which outsiders

are measured” (Sibley, 1981:6) but perhaps more as a

yardstick with which to beat them! Sibley (1995:102) laments

the way “Gypsies in the city are likely to appear out of place

and to be represented in negative and malign terms” but then

goes on to locate New Age Travellers firmly in the countryside

(1995:106-107). In fact, many studies connect New Age

Travellers with a desire for rural life (Cresswell, 1996;

Halfacree, 1996; Hetherington, 200; Rojek, 1988; Sibley, 1995)

and this assumption is as problematic for New Age Travellers as

it has been for Gypsies (Okely, 1983; Sibley, 1981; 1995),

resulting in an ongoing distinction between ‘real’ New Age

Travellers and “town-based squatters, crusties and buskers”

(Hetherington, 2000:70). Just as “the Gypsies can only survive

as a group within the context of a larger economy and society”

(Okely, 1983:30), the same can also be said of New Age

Travellers, and this has often necessitated urban living.

Greg Martin’s ‘Generational differences amongst New Age

Travellers’ (1998) attempts to explain this error by looking at

the social context within which people went on the road. Martin


(1998) suggests that the earlier New Age Travellers, who

formed the original ‘convoy’ and free festival circuit in the

1970s, were people who “gave up the relative security of their

jobs and their homes, and opted for what they believed to be

an existence that offered a better quality of life” (1998:741). In

contrast, those who went on the road in the mid to late 1980s

were largely “economic refugees” who were “forced to do so

for want of any reasonable alternative” (1998:745). This has an

interesting relevance to Berger’s (1979) ‘cultures of survival /

cultures of progress’, referred to by Sibley (1981:13-14). Berger

(1979) asserts that the peasantry represent “a class apart” who

“maintained or developed their own unwritten laws and codes

of behaviour, their own rituals and beliefs, their own orally

transmitted body of wisdom and knowledge, their own

medicine, their own techniques and sometimes their own

language” (1979:197) and can thus be identified with other

“peripheral group cultures” (Sibley, 1981:14). This kind of

peasant culture, then, is said to be a “culture of survival” which

“envisages the future as a sequence of repeated acts for

survival” (Berger, 1979:204). “Cultures of progress”, on the

other hand, are those that predominate in modern society and

are concerned with expansion: “they are forward looking

because the future offers ever larger hopes” (1979:204). If we

apply this to Martin’s (1998) analysis of generational

differences, it could be said that the convoy was born of a

culture of progress, at a time when they were “privileged

enough to fight for quality of life issues” (1998:741). However,

by the 1980s there was far more emphasis on survival as a


result of Thatcherite policies which led to high unemployment,

homelessness and increasing restrictions in the benefit system

(1998:745).

Many of the New Age Travellers in Martin’s (1998) study

recognized the irony of their decision to go on the road, to

provide themselves with cheap accommodation in the face of

unemployment and homelessness, as being “entirely consistent

with the prevailing political ideology of personal responsibility

and enterprise” and felt that “the Governments reaction [w]as

wholly unreasonable” (1998:749). Of course, when those in

poverty find an “innovative counter-measure” it is always, as

Bauman (1998b:39) stated, destined to be outlawed. For, just

as Cohen (1980, cited by Sibley, 1995:40) said

Our society as presently structured will continue to generate problems for some of its members … and then condemn whatever solutions these groups find.

Yet, while the numbers have undoubtedly diminished, New Age

Travellers, like other travelling cultures before them, have

persisted (Sibley, 1986). Berger (1979) was pessimistic about

the continuing survival of the peasantry but nonetheless he

presented a model of a culture which has lived at the margins

of the dominant culture and survived through adaptation and a

degree of self-sufficiency (1979:197). Whatever has happened

to New Age Travellers since the introduction of the Criminal

Justice and Public Order Act in 1994 – whether they have fled

the country as Martin (2002:749) suggested, or simply found

ways to stay out of the public consciousness – there is a distinct


lack of academic literature concerning the ways in which New

Age Travellers have adapted and survived.

References


Barth, F (1975) ‘The social organization of a pariah group in Norway’ in Rehfisch, F (ed) (1975) Gypsies, Tinkers and Other Travellers London: Academic Press

Bauman, Z (1998a) Globalization: The Human Consequences Cambridge: Polity Press

Bauman, Z (1998b) Work, Consumerism and the New Poor Buckingham: Open University Press

Berger, J (1979) Pig Earth London: Writers & Readers Publishing Co-op

Cohen, S (1980) Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers London: MacGibbon & Kee

Cresswell, T (1996) In Place, Out of Place: Geography, Ideology and Transgression Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press

Cresswell, T (2001) The Tramp in America London: Reaktion Books

Cresswell, T (2004) Place: A Short Introduction Oxford: Blackwell

Cresswell, T (2006) On the Move: Mobility in the Modern Western World London: Routledge

Davis, J, Grant, R & Locke, A (1994) Out of Site, Out of Mind: New Age Travellers and the Criminal Justice and Public Order Bill London: The Children’s Society

Halfacree, K (1996) ‘Out of place in the country: Travellers and the “rural idyll”’ in Antipode 28 (1) 42-71

Hetherington, K (2000) New Age Travellers: Vanloads of Uproarious Humanity London: Cassell


Levinson, M & Sparkes, A (2004) ‘Gypsy identity and orientations to space’ in Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 33 (6) 704-734

Lowe, R & Shaw, W (1993) Travellers: Voices of the New Age Nomads London: Fourth Estate

Martin, G (1998) ‘Generational differences amongst New Age Travellers’ in Sociological Review 46 (4) 735-756

Martin, G (2002) ‘New Age Travellers: uproarious or uprooted?’ in Sociology 36 (3) 723-735

Okely, J (1983) The Traveller-Gypsies Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Rehfisch, F (ed) (1975) Gypsies, Tinkers and Other Travellers London: Academic Press

Rodaway, P (2004) ‘David Sibley’ in Hubbard, P, Kitchin, R & Valentine, G (2004) Key Thinkers on Space and Place London: Sage

Rojek, C (1988) ‘The convoy of pollution’ in Leisure Studies 7 (1) 20-31

Shields, R (1991) Places on the Margin: Alternative Geographies of Modernity London: Routledge

Sibley, D (1981) Outsiders in Urban Societies Oxford: Blackwell

Sibley, D (1986) ‘Persistence or change? Conflicting interpretations of peripheral minorities’ in Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 4 (1) 57–70

Sibley, D (1995) Geographies of Exclusion: Society and Difference in the West London: Routledge


Sibley, D (1999) ‘Outsiders in society and space’ in Anderson, K & Gale, F (eds) (1999) Cultural Geographies 2nd edition Australia: Longman

Webster, L & Millar, J (2001) Making a living: Social security, social exclusion and New Travellers – Summary of Findings [online] Available at http://www.jrf.org.uk/knowledge/findings/socialpolicy/pdf/521.pdf Accessed 21/10/2008

Wilkin, K (1998) ‘Sustainable social exclusion: the case of land-use planning and newer travellers’ in Critical Social Policy 18 (1) 103-120

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