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Biopolitics and Movement: A History of Travellers and the Law

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Abstract

This article will briefly trace the travellers’ legal position in Britain from their sixteenth century emergence as a tangible (although imprecise) identity until now. It will be argued that although the position of the law has changed considerably in its waning severity, travellers’ legal status continues to be conditioned by enduring and shifting concerns around norms of labour and residence. Moreover, it is overly-simplistic to interpret their changing predicament as simply a more humane and multicultural relaxation of previously Draconian measures. Using Michel Foucault’s writings on discipline and ‘biopolitics’, it will be proposed that those extreme legal sanctions—which during certain periods included the death penalty—have been replaced by a much more nuanced matrix of regulation and control that seeks to assimilate traveller lifestyles into a mainstream understanding of human life and society.

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Notes

  1. Cahn and Guild (2008, 82–93).

  2. As a grim illustration of widespread sentiment, in March 2005 Britain’s biggest-selling newspaper, The Sun, launched a pernicious and unsubtly-titled campaign under the slogan of ‘Stamp on the Camps’.

  3. Cahn and Guild (2008, 8).

  4. Mayall (1998, 73).

  5. Okely (1983, 8–15).

  6. Fraser (1992, 111), Ribton-Turner (1887, 485).

  7. 22 Hen. VIII c. 10.

  8. 1 & 2 Philip & Mary c. 4.

  9. 5 Eliz. I c. 20.

  10. Greenfields (2006, 59).

  11. Beier (1985, 30).

  12. Stephen (1996, 266–267).

  13. Rickard (1995, 1–10).

  14. Charlesworth (2006, 8).

  15. 11 Hen. VII c. 2.

  16. 22 Hen. VIII c. 12.

  17. Beier (1985, 160).

  18. Stephen (1996, 270).

  19. Charlesworth (1999).

  20. Ibid, 158.

  21. Egyptians Act 1530 (22 Hen. VIII c. 10).

  22. Radzinowicz and Hood (1990, 340).

  23. Stephen (1996, 274).

  24. Beier (1985, 59).

  25. Ribton-Turner (1996, 491).

  26. Beier (1985, 62).

  27. Fraser (1992, 135).

  28. Ibid, 133.

  29. Ibid, 135–137.

  30. Foucault (1998, 137).

  31. Hunt and Wickham (1994).

  32. Golder and Fitzpatrick (2009).

  33. Simons (1995, 45).

  34. E.g. Foucault (2004); Foucault (2009).

  35. Foucault (2004, 36).

  36. Foucault (1977).

  37. Foucault (2004, 242–243).

  38. Foucault (2009, 4–5).

  39. Tyrnauer (1991, vii).

  40. Foucault (2004, 255–256).

  41. Ibid, 260.

  42. Ibid, 256.

  43. Foucault (2002, 361).

  44. Foucault (2009, 20).

  45. Ibid, 18.

  46. Hawes and Perez (1996, 180).

  47. Belton (2005, 115–116).

  48. Clements and Campbell (1997, 62).

  49. See Stewart (1997) for a discussion of this particular perception.

  50. Belton (2005, 120).

  51. Hawes and Perez (1996, 128).

  52. See, e.g., Yiftachel (1998), Allmendinger and Tewdwr-Jones (2002), Ploger (2008).

  53. Spencer (2005, 337).

  54. Brown and Niner (2009, 23).

  55. Jones et al. (2007, 77).

  56. [2004] U.K.H.L. 33.

  57. Spencer (2005, 337).

  58. Jones et al. (2007, 108).

  59. Brown and Niner (2009).

  60. Foucault (2004, 251).

  61. Golder and Fitzpatrick (2009, 60).

  62. Niner (2003).

  63. Cemlyn et al. (2009).

  64. (1997) 23 E.H.R.R. 101.

  65. Ibid, 126.

  66. Ibid, 129.

  67. (2001) E.H.R.R. 399.

  68. The judgement in Chapman also chose to reject the argument that the Council of Europe’s 1995 Framework Convention for the Protection of Minorities should serve to narrow the margin of appreciation held by contracting states.

  69. Sandland (2008, 483).

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  1. Faculty of Law, Governance and International Relations, London Metropolitan University, 16 Goulston Street, London, E1 7TP, UK

    Matthew Stone

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Stone, M. Biopolitics and Movement: A History of Travellers and the Law. Liverpool Law Rev 32, 49–63 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10991-011-9089-x

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