Introduction

This chapter engages with both the ethical and practical aspects of undertaking partnership research with members of Gypsy and Traveller communities. It is underpinned by an exposition on the philosophy and methodologies utilised in two key research projects, both of which explicitly sought to utilise participatory methods as a way of increasing the skills base of Gypsy and Traveller research partners as well as ideologically rejecting methodological practices that seek to impose mainstream categories and assumptions on marginalised or excluded peoples (Pollner and Rosenfeld, 2000). In other words, these were projects that sought to ethically research ‘with’ and ‘for’ Gypsies and Travellers rather than carrying out research ‘on’ members of these communities.

The earlier of these two studies (perhaps surprisingly, the first in the UK to have employed trained Gypsy and Traveller interviewers to work with their own communities) was the Cambridge Gypsy Traveller Accommodation Assessment (GTAA) undertaken between 2005 and 2006 (Greenfields and Home, 2006). The lessons learnt in that project in relation to supporting community interviewers, and the methodology and training devised to support participants, which has been commended as best practice by the Commission for Racial Equality and the Fundamental Rights Agency (among others), has since been developed and used in other GTAAs across Britain. It has also been developed to an expanded form within the key economic inclusion research undertaken by the Irish Traveller Movement in Britain (ITMB) – the Traveller Economic Inclusion Project (TEIP), the second research project that this chapter focuses on (Ryder and Greenfields, 2010). This latter research, which was financially supported by the Big Lottery Fund with the explicit intention of influencing policy and practice mechanisms for enhancing the economic inclusion of Gypsies and Travellers, was guided, perhaps even more clearly than the Cambridge GTAA, by refined principles of participatory action research (PAR), a mode of action that actively addresses issues of power (and empowerment) and politics (Reason and Bradbury, 2008). Within the remainder of this chapter, the authors set out the case for why PAR is an ethical model that can be applied appropriately to research with Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities, and argue that utilisation of such a process, despite the challenges that can sometimes occur in operationalising this methodology, offers the best means of undertaking politicised and inclusive intercultural research that gives ‘voice’ to those who are frequently unheard.