Conventional and frequently romanticised portrayals of Gypsy and Travellers’ lives are often preoccupied by ‘paradigm[s] of romanticism and a biological/hereditary nexus’ focusing on these aspects of identity until members of those communities are beyond recognition as members of wider civic society (Belton, 2005, p 46). This text seeks to examine the decline of nomadic lifestyles among Britain's Gypsy and Traveller population and ‘rehumanise’ the debate through exploring the impact of a (largely enforced) sedentary existence on these communities and the collective adaptations that have evolved in response to significant changes to their traditional way of life.

This book explores how these changes have had both generational and gender-based impacts, as over recent decades there has been a steep decline in the ability of Gypsies and Travellers to live a nomadic existence, as residence on permanent caravan sites and in conventional housing has become the norm for most of the estimated 300,000 population (CRE, 2006). The majority of this population, as many as two thirds, are now believed to be living in ‘bricks and mortar’ housing. The large-scale settlement of travelling communities has been driven by successive policies that have sought to accommodate Gypsies and Travellers (and to some extent recognise their continued cultural preferences for caravan dwelling) whilst engaging with the stubborn and continued issue of unauthorised encampments and the resulting tensions with the settled community (Richardson, 2007b). In practice such policies have often had the unintended consequences of worsening the situation by inflaming conflicts with settled society whilst simultaneously accelerating the settlement of Gypsies and Travellers onto a declining supply of official pitches or, for many more, into social housing where they place additional demands on an already overstretched housing stock. Despite the rate and size of this settlement into ‘bricks and mortar’ in recent decades and an extensive body of research into the housing ‘careers’ and residential patterns of other minority groups, this book represents the first detailed study of Gypsies and Travellers in housing to be published in Britain.