Delighted to be able to share the full Out of The Shadows report on the experiences of Traveller and Roma families within education, commissioned by the Department of Education and Skills and the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth.
It was a real privilege to work with children and parents from the Traveller and Roma communities on this project – they shared their often painful and traumatic experiences of school and workplaces with us with such open-hearted grace. They welcomed us into their homes; youth clubs; families – into their safe spaces - with a generosity which is all too often not reciprocated by the settled community in Ireland. None of this would have been possible without the leadership and support of Maria Joyce of the National Traveller Women’s Forum; Anne Burke of the Cork Traveller Visibility Group; and Kathleen Murphy; John McDonnell; Patrick McDonnell; and Emma Plesca from the NTRIS education pilot team.
I am sincerely thankful to Jean Rafter, Noel Kelly at Tusla and Dr Kasey Treadwell Shine at the DCEDIY for supporting and championing the use of the innovative approach we used in the project – who were determined to put Traveller and Roma children and parents at the centre of this research. They allowed us to get creative with the methodological approach – to draw from visual sociology; design-thinking; ethnographic interviewing; experience-based co-design to develop a bespoke approach to explore a complex, sensitive issue. This approach helps us to create the safety required to have nuanced conversations about challenging subjects in a way which is trauma-informed.
In my experience, to really get under the skin of complex multi-layered issues such as structural discrimination - what it means to ‘belong’, to feel ‘included’, we need sophisticated evidence-informed methods. We need to understand our own bias and positionality, we need to understand whose voice counts as ‘evidence’, whose voice we feel is ‘legitimate’ – we need to democratise and decolonise how we create knowledge rather than continuing to reinforce the very power structures which create inequality in the first place. We need to challenge the myth of research objectivity. If we want to affect real change we need to use methods which are proven to do just that – co-designed, solutions-oriented approaches which amplify and centralise the voices of those with the real insight needed to solve problems – those who live with the consequences of discriminatory structures on a daily basis. Methods which have compassion and empathy at the centre, which help us see from another’s perspective in ways which enable real, sustainable change to occur. These kinds of sociological methods have been described as ‘ungaslighting’ – they get right to the heart of an issue in a way which is so real and truthful that it is hard to deflect, dismiss or look away from.
My wish is that we stop asking members of the Travelling community to expend the emotional labour required to repeatedly share their stories, and instead that we listen and act. There have been many reports published on the barriers and enablers to creating equity in education and workplaces, the implementation of the recommendations is really where focus needs to remain. Research has an important place in moving our knowledge base forward, but we do all of us a disservice if we use research as another means of deflecting from real action, or if we fail to use research findings to have the difficult conversations required to move our societies forward.
