This blog is based on an article in Social Policy and Society by Colin Clark. Click here to access the article.
Setting the scene
My recent article in Social Policy & Society considers a very specific example of environmental injustice in Scotland: the ‘space and place’ of Gypsy/Traveller communities and their accommodation on local authority, private, and roadside sites.
Politically, the Scottish National Party (SNP) and the Scottish Greens have been in favour of providing and funding site/pitch upgrades, including developing new site locations. However, these proposals have often been controversial, and reactions have been debated by local councillors, the media, and non-Traveller settled neighbours, ‘flatties’.
By drawing on the work of Julia Kristeva (1982) and Imogen Tyler (2013), one explanation for understanding responses to the contested ‘space and place’ of Gypsy/Traveller sites is via the concept of (social) abjection.
The Gypsy/Traveller communities of Scotland
The Gypsy/Traveller population of Scotland is a heterogenous one that speaks a variety of languages across different parts of the country, including groups of Indigenous Highland Travellers, Lowland Travellers, Border Gypsies/Romanichals and Showmen.
Regarding numbers, the 2011 Census figure of 4,200 people identifying as “white: Gypsy/Traveller” in Scotland is a population undercount and agencies and bodies working closely with the communities suggest figures closer to 15,000-20,000 people. We await updated figures from Census 2022.
Regarding sites, recent data show 54 sites in total, with 29 public sites and 25 private sites identified (in total some 613 pitches). More than 400 locations in Scotland had been used for roadside encampments (‘unauthorised sites’) between 2016-2019. In terms of patterns and trends, there has been a general decline in public site provision, more applications for private site developments, and a relative increase in roadside camp numbers.
What are the key issues?
Issues of environmental injustice relate to the standards, facilities, and locations of Gypsy/Traveller sites in Scotland. Although £20 million in funding for site and pitch upgrades and improvements has been provided by the Scottish Government since 2018-2019, limited progress has been made on site redevelopment work, citing delays caused by external factors such as Brexit, covid-19, the war in Ukraine, and the cost-of-living crisis.
The core problem is that even quite basic living standards are absent on many Gypsy/Traveller sites across Scotland, especially in more rural locations and areas where a tradition of site provision is lacking. There are knock-on human rights impacts in terms of accessing other public services such as healthcare, education, and social welfare.
As an example of trying to push for change, it took the owners of the St Cyrus site, North Esk Traveller Park, nearly a decade to obtain even temporary permissions and this was an expensive and frustrating process. The long-term future of the site at St Cyrus remains uncertain due to flooding risks and the site has been evacuated in the recent past due to the banks collapsing at the river North Esk.
Abjection and social abjection
Conceptually, the paper draws on the work of Julia Kristeva and Imogen Tyler to better understand reactions to the ‘space and place’ of Gypsy/Traveller sites, both geospatially and in the wider public imagination. Abjection, and social abjection, are pivotal in illustrating how social exclusion, racism, and discrimination are understood and legitimated in the public realm.
Abjection refers to a state of ‘primal order’ that falls outside the usually identified ‘symbolic order’ of any given society and moral norms. In this sense, the ‘abject’ is a fundamentally human response – fear, rejection, othering, racism – to a confusion in meaning and/or distinction of subject and object, or indeed, between self and other.
In the context of the article, Gypsy/Traveller sites are viewed as places of ‘defilement’ that lie outside the ‘symbolic order’ of mainstream sedentarist society; abjection is, in a real sense, to be ‘cast off’ and detached from commonly understood and accepted codes of conduct within any given society.
The ‘fear’ of Gypsy/Traveller site developments from flatties tends to stem from a place of concern about property prices being devalued if a new Gypsy/Traveller site is approved and developed close to neighbouring estates. There are also broader market-based issues of competition for land from developers, as well as any previous negative experiences of being close to sites and/or roadside camps and issues being raised or noted.
The ‘wrong side of the tracks’
Drawing on recent work by the investigative journalist Katharine Quarmby, it is noted that too many local authority Gypsy/Traveller sites across Scotland are close to hazards that impact quality of life, health, and access to public services. Such hazards include motorways, industrial estates, sewage plants, and recycling and refuse centres.
The term used by Quarmby is that sites are far too often located on the ‘wrong side of the tracks’ and this accurately summarises the situation of the isolated and disadvantaged geographies of where Gypsy/Traveller sites are to be found across Scotland, such as at Bobbin Mill or at Double Dykes, sites that are both located in Perth and Kinross.
The way forward
Although the £20 million-pound Scottish Government Gypsy/Traveller Accommodation Fund is valued, in terms of offering councils funding to undertake essential upgrades to existing site provision, this does not offer the potential for more fundamental or radical changes to site locations and new spaces that are environmentally safe for families to stay on.
A much bolder future – of new, safer, ‘green’ spaces for locating Gypsy/Traveller sites – will require something much more; a political will that seeks to challenge and change both discriminatory legislative planning issues, as well as deeper structural issues rooted in challenging the social abjection faced by Gypsy/Traveller community members and their long-held cultural preferences to stay on sites.
Meeting the accommodation needs of Gypsy/Traveller community members who are residents of sites across Scotland needs to be a priority for any government that claims to be promoting social justice and tackling inequalities.
About the author
Colin Clark is an Associate Dean for Research and Innovation and a Professor of Sociology and Social Policy in the School of Education and Social Sciences at the University of the West of Scotland.
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