Overview
- Offers young women’s perspectives and accounts of life in the family and at school
- Presents the girls’ culture, language, identity, thoughts and emotions
- Serves as a portal on a closed community and re-appraises common misperceptions about Gypsies and Travellers
Part of the book series: Studies in Childhood and Youth (SCY)
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Table of contents (8 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
This book presents the untold stories of Gypsy and Traveller girls living in Scotland. Drawing on accounts of the girls’ lives and offering space for their voices to be heard, the author addresses contemporary and traditional stereotypes and racialised misconceptions of Gypsies and Travellers. Marcus explores how the stubborn persistence of these negative views appears to contribute to policies and practices of neglect, inertia or intervention that often aim to ‘civilise’ and further assimilate these communities into the mainstream settled population. It is against this backdrop that the book exposes the girls’ racialised and gendered experiences, which impact on their struggles as young people to realise their potential and future prospects. Their narratives reveal the strengths of a distinct community, and the complexity of their silence and agency within the patriarchal structures that pervade the private spaces of home and the public spaces of education. This study also invitesthe reader to reflect on how the experiences of Gypsy and Traveller girls compares with young women from other social backgrounds, and questions if there is more that binds us than divides us as women in the modern world.
Gypsy and Traveller Girls will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including sociology, education, gender studies and social policy.
Reviews
“A beautifully crafted, myth-busting book. Marcus brings her phenomenal skills as a master storyteller to prise open the silent, closed world of the young women from these outcast communities.” (Heidi Safia Mirza, Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK)
“Marcus offers a new and incisive interpretation of the voices of Gypsy and Traveller girls in Scotland about their racialized, gendered, classed, and generational experiences of discrimination.” (Angéla Kóczé, Central European University, Hungary)
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Geetha Marcus is Lecturer in Education at the University of Glasgow, UK. She is a sociologist, feminist and teacher activist.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Gypsy and Traveller Girls
Book Subtitle: Silence, Agency and Power
Authors: Geetha Marcus
Series Title: Studies in Childhood and Youth
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03703-1
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Social Sciences, Social Sciences (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-03702-4Published: 07 February 2019
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-03703-1Published: 25 January 2019
Series ISSN: 2731-6467
Series E-ISSN: 2731-6475
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XXVII, 334
Number of Illustrations: 7 b/w illustrations, 6 illustrations in colour
Topics: Gender Studies, Childhood, Adolescence and Society, Ethnicity Studies, Schools and Schooling