This book is based on the 14 months between January 2013 and March 2014 I spent conducting fieldwork, living with three families who were identified by the local state as Romanian Roma or Gypsies. Anthropologists have been thinking about issues surrounding ethnographic fieldwork, writing and knowledge production for a long time. Knowledge ‘creates’ the world by giving it shape and so discourse and symbolic constructs configure the way we make sense of our lives. Anthropologists tend to repeat representations when talking about these constructs (such as ethnic groups, cultural meanings or values), presenting these concepts as if they actually existed (Brubaker 2002). However, these representations might best be seen as schemes which function as methods that produce expectations (D’Andrade 1995: 79). Crucially, schemes are structured around paradigms. Therefore, within this framework, perceiving the world means putting it in relation to these schemes that give reality form and meaning (with the acknowledgement that the schemes themselves are reshaped and reorganised in the light of every new experience of interpretation). This book can be seen as a narrative which gives reality a possible shape.

The chapters that follow can therefore be seen to represent my understanding of the world produced by those I spent time with, which has been given shape by using the language provided from my background and education, making these experiences interact and blend with my fieldwork. These experiences were not solely mine, but made in relation to all those who I spent time with. However, I did not just participate and ‘observe’ others. I was also being observed, talked about and reacted to in various different ways. Ethnographers and ‘the observed’ manipulate each other, negotiate and adjust their categories of thought, and eventually produce a fusion that results in new meanings (Rabinow 2007: 6).

Most importantly, the ethnographic text must be seen as only one perspective, a reflection on the events that were experienced. In the words of Appadurai (1988: 16), ‘the ethnographic text is the more or less creative imposition of order on the many conversations that lie at the heart of fieldwork’. With this in mind, I detail how I went about living with Romanian Roma families and the frontline workers (social workers, teachers, doctors, children's centre workers) and volunteers they encountered in Luton.