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Non-Territorial Culture as The Rationale for the Assimilation of Gypsy Children

University of Hull, UK

This article argues that the ambiguous status of a travelling ethnic group has implications for the state's interest in the assimilation of that group. The social reproduction of the group through the education of children becomes a crucial site of struggle. The Gypsies have to adapt to or subvert the dominant hegemony of sedentarism and the priveleging of a permanent place for identity. They must also retain control over their social reproduction through their children's upbringing. They have for centuries virtually monopolized the education of their children. Education outside the Gypsy community can be what Althusser defined as part of the state apparatus. Alternatively, the Gypsies might, through their traditions of working within but independently of the dominant larger society, find ways of subverting a state educational programme of assimilation, using it for their own ends to ensure their survival as a self-determined group. But government policies directed towards Gypsies' schooling are largely aimed at incorporation. Schooling is not a neutral intellectual liberation, as many educational `aficionados' of Gypsies believe.

Key Words: assimilation • education • Gypsies • nomadism • non-literacy • sedentarism • territoriality

Childhood, Vol. 4, No. 1, 63-80 (1997)
DOI: 10.1177/0907568297004001004


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