Where are the Romanies? An Absent Presence in Narratives of Britishness

The article explores the exclusion or ghettoization of British Romani experience in narratives of historical Britishness, an action that resounds in contemporary politics and identities. It suggests that scholarship might do more to retrieve quotidian and, in particular, shared histories of British Romani culture, integrating those histories into broader narratives about a national past. This scholarly retrieval of everyday Romani life in the past involves reconsidering what might constitute evidence of this experience, and might be open to rewriting established orthodoxies of Romani/Gypsy Studies, with an awareness of the politics of such subversion.