Who is talking to young Roma, Gypsy and Traveller people about careers?

Nicola Hay

nicola.hay@uws.ac.uk

@N1colahay

mailto:nicola.hay@uws.ac.uk

Occupational Nomads?

• Romani Gypsy’s – English Gypsy’s and Welsh Kale (India 1500s?)

• Scottish Travellers (1500s – 1800s)

• Irish Travellers (11th century)

• Showpeople

• Roma: political refugees 1990s; European accession migrants (A2 and A8)

Census 2011 (ONS, 2014)

• 63, 000 Gypsy/Travellers living in the UK

• 60% held no formal qualifications

• Less likely to be economically active

• More likely to never have worked

Multiple Indices of Deprivation (EHRC, 2015)

• Housing

• Education

• Employment

• Health & well-being

• Societal prejudice

Parental attitudes to education

Source: ACERT, 2017

• Positive attitudes toward education

• Traditional G/T jobs ‘drying up’ (Bhopal, 2004)

• Increased retention

• Reduced risk of drop-out

• Parents-turn (Ooman, 2018)

Multiple factors but…

• Racism most consistently cited factor

• Ages of 13 – 14

• Careers Guidance as a tool? (Andrews & Hooley)

Research aims

• aspirations

• young people’s access to and experiences of Careers Services

• career related learning in the curriculum

• workplace learning

• opportunities for employer engagement

• identify barriers to good practice

Ecological Development framework

Young Person

Teachers

Parents

Career Practition

ers

NGOs

Siblings

Policy Makers

Semi-structured Interviews

Focus Groups

Surveys

The literature & lived experience

• Difficulty in gaining access (Marcus, 2016)

• Barriers to access (Messing, 2014)

• Closed community (Hamilton, 2018)

• Trust and relationship building

Emerging themes

Source: Travellers Times, 2016

• Roma & language barriers across all stakeholders

• Language barriers & increased engagement with Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths

• Eager for employment by 4th year

• S1’s interested in joining Police

Emerging themes

• Highly relevant to Scottish Travellers

• Gendered division of roles

• CSC cards

Challenging narratives

• Sir John Holman (2014) speaks of challenging internalised notions of what ‘what people like them do’.

• But it is also equally important to challenge notions in the public imaginary of ‘what Gypsy, Roma and Traveller people do’.

How suitable are Gypsy/Travellers to be primary teachers?

Source: Scottish Social Attitudes Survey, 2015

People like us

“The attitudes are too often ‘It’s not worth it because he will just claim benefits/do whatever basic labour his dad does’ or, as in my case, ‘He’ll just do the fair” (English Showman)

‘… not all of us want to go into construction’ (Hungarian Roma)

Community

‘Career guidance supports individuals and groups to discover moreabout work, leisure and learning and to consider their place in theworld and plan for their futures. Key to this is developing individualand community capacity to analyse and problematise assumptionsand power relations, to network and build solidarity and to createnew and shared opportunities. It empowers individuals and groupsto struggle within the world as it as it is and to imagine the world as itcould be’ (Hooley, Sultana & Thomsen, 2018).

Stakeholders as community

References

ACERT (2017). The Legacy of Plowden. Accessed from https://acert.org.uk/blog/2017/07/18/legacy-of-plowden-mini-conference/

Bhopal, K. (2011). ‘This is a school, it’s not a site’: Teachers’ attitudes towards Gypsy and Traveller pupils in schools in England, UK. British Educational Research Journal, 37, 465–483.

Flecha, R. and Soler, M. (2013) Turning difficulties into possibilities: engaging Roma families and students in school through dialogic learning, Cambridge Journal of Education, 43:4, 451-465, DOI: 10.1080/0305764X.2013.819068

García-Carrión, R., Molina-Luque, F., and Roldán, S. (2017) How do vulnerable youth complete secondary education? The key role of families and the community, Journal of Youth Studies, DOI: 10.1080/13676261.2017.1406660

Hooley, T, Sultana, RG & Thomsen, R 2018, Career guidance for social justice: contesting neoliberalism. Routledge Studies in Education, Neoliberalism, and Marxism, no. 16, vol. 1, Routledge, New York.

National Records of Scotland (2018). Scotland’s Census 2021 Topic event: ethnicity, nationality, language and religion. Edinburgh. Accessed from: https://www.scotlandscensus.gov.uk/documents/get-involved/Scotlands-Census-2021-Topic-Event-20-April-2017-Ethnicity-National-Identity-Religion.pdf

Plowden Report (1967) Children and their primary schools: a report of the Central Advisory Council for Education (London, HMSO).

Scottish Centre for Social Research. (2010) Scottish social attitudes survey 2010. Accessed 25 January 2018 from http://www.ssa.natcen.ac.uk/media/38903/attitudes-to-discrimination-and-positive-action-2015.pdf

SRtRC (2017) https://twitter.com/SRtRCScotland/status/786471304182497281

Swann Report (1985) Education for all: the report of the Committee of Enquiry into the Education of Children from Ethnic Minority Groups (London, Her Majesty’s Stationery Office).

The Scottish Government (2015). Gypsy/Travellers in Scotland: A comprehensive analysis of the 2011 census. Edinburgh.

Times Higher Education (n.d). Gypsies: an English History. Accessed from https://www.timeshighereducation.com/cn/books/gypsies-english-history-david-cressy-oxford-university-press

Travellers Times (2016). Third annual celebration of international Roma Day takes place in Scotland. Accessed from https://www.travellerstimes.org.uk/news/2016/04/third-annual-celebration-international-roma-day-takes-place-scotland

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