1. Gypsy-Travellers: stigmatisation and social integration Ryan Powell Conflict in space and place - accommodation and planning issues for Gypsies and Travellers, De Montfort University, Leicester, November 29th, 2012.

2. Contested Gypsy-Traveller community  shared aspects of culture  shared space of the site  common response from government and authorities  BUT...heterogeneity and disidentification among different groups

3. Social integration?  Not straightforward; binaries can be unhelpful inclusion/ exclusion social care/ social control integration/ assimilation  What's the problem with segregation? What's to be achieved by reducing it? (Flint, 2009)  positive and enabling factors of segregation  strengths and weaknesses of spatial concentration (Marcuse, 1997; Wacquant, 2004, 2008)  integration on whose terms?  importance of a long-term, historical perspective i.e. persistent persecution and stigma  'mixing without integration' (Sibley, 1998) functional interdependence; unequal power relations; mutual avoidance

4. Gypsy-Travellers perceived to be at odds with dominant norms  social integration = individualization and self-betterment  group orientation of Gypsy-Travellers extended family and socialisation inter-generational mixing educational differences  remarkable resistance and cultural continuity in the face of pressures to conform  resistance and maintenance of culture and nomadism deemed "less civilised"  Gypsy-Travellers treated as inferior; of lesser human worth - key question is why and how is this so persistent?

5. Learning from the "ghetto"?  2 key and related questions: why does the stigmatisation of Gypsy-Travellers run so deep and persistent over the last 500 years? how have Gypsy-Travellers maintained their own identity and culture?  Loïc Wacquant's concept of the "ghetto" as a tool of comparison (Powell, 2013)  Gypsy-Traveller sites are NOT ghettos  BUT...commonalities....a weapon of 'confinement and control' for the dominant and an 'integrative and protective device' for the stigmatized

6. Commonalities with Wacquant's ghetto  spatial confinement and control  ethnic homogeneity  retreat into the sphere of the family  mutual distancing  shared cultural identity reinforced through confinement

7. Divergence from Wacquant's ghetto?  changing economic function?  parallel institutionalism?  relationship with the state?  the above represent areas for further research that could enhance understanding through comparative analyses with Wacquant's theoretical concept of the "ghetto"

8. References  Flint, J. (2009) 'Cultures, ghettos and camps: sites of exception and antagonism in the city', Housing Studies, 24(4), pp.417-431.  Marcuse, P. (1997) 'The enclave, the citadel, and the ghetto: what has changed in the post-Fordist US city', Urban Affairs Review, 33(2), pp.228-264.  Powell, R. (2013, forthcoming) 'Loïc Wacquant's "ghetto" and ethnic minority segregation in the UK: the neglected case of Gypsy-Travellers', IJURR.  Sibley, D. (1998) 'Problematizing exclusion: reflections on space, difference and knowledge', International planning studies, 3, pp. 93-100.  Wacquant, L. (2004) ‘Ghetto’, International Encyclopaedia of the Social and Behavioural Sciences.  Wacquant, L. (2008) ‘Ghettos and anti-ghettos: An anatomy of the new urban poverty’, Thesis Eleven, 94, pp.113-118.  Wacquant, L. (2012) 'A janus-faced institution of ethnoracial closure: a sociological specification of the ghetto', in Hutchison, R. and Haynes, B. D. (eds) The Ghetto: Contemporary Global Issues and Controversies (pp.1-32). Boulder: Westview.