Governing Traveller Identity Analysing the Irish State’s Refusal to Recognise Traveller Ethnicity by

Abstract

In November 2014, the Minister of State for Equality Aodhán Ó Riordáin said that it was “no longer tenable for this State to deny Traveller ethnicity” and that Traveller ethnicity will be “a reality” in six months (Holland, 2014). This article analyses the rationale on the basis of which the Irish state appears to be coming to acknowledge Traveller ethnicity. It does this by examining the state’s hitherto refusal to acknowledge Travellers as an ethnic group, a refusal which has played out in the communications of the state with two of the international human rights bodies to which it reports: the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), and the Advisory Committee on the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (ACFC). Examining the contents of these communications that pertain to Traveller ethnicity, my analysis reveals three distinct rationales upon the basis of which the state has denied Travellers ethnic group status: what I label (a) ‘Ethnic Recognition is Unimportant’, (b) ‘Traveller Ethnicity is Unproven’, and (c) ‘Travellers are Divided on the Issue’. The article concludes by examining indications that Traveller ethnicity will soon be recognised in light of these three rationales. I argue that forthcoming ethnic recognition appears to be founded upon a continuation of the state’s practice of flouting Traveller self-determination in favour of recourse to ‘expertise’ and ‘objectivity’ in the governing of Traveller identity