Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the notion of 'embodied memory', using ethnographic vignettes of COVID vaccination, to reflect on the challenges of working collaboratively with Gypsy, Traveller and Roma communities in England, in upholding their claims to state and citizenship ‘at the margins of the state’.

Paper long abstract:

Recently, the long history of political and legal persecution and marginalisation of people of Romani, Gypsy, Traveller and Roma heritages is increasingly being recognised within the broader literature on historical trauma and the Holocaust. Borrowing Fassin’s notion of ‘embodied memory’ (2008), this paper explores the potential links between historical trauma and the enduring, intergenerational physical and mental health inequities faced by children and adults of Gypsy, Traveller and Roma heritage, as compared to all other minorities in the UK.

An ethnographic study of COVID vaccination from North England is used to draw out the challenges of working collaboratively with a community organisation, documenting the claims of research participants to state, health and citizenship made ‘at the margins of the state’ within quotidian contexts (Das and Poole, 2004). We appreciate why the boundaries between health and disease, ill-health and wellbeing might be fragile. We analyse the impact of enduring stigma, racialisation and discrimination faced by families related to their culture, surnames and postcodes identifying them as living on a ‘(caravan) site’. Finally, the paper reflects on some of the challenges of finding solutions for addressing known health inequalities, especially when it comes to lack of trust in state and its bureaucratic methods of enumeration (census and NHS surveys) for identifying and classifying people by their ethnic and religious affiliation; reminding medical anthropologists, yet again, of the complex boundaries of 'community' that we must navigate in practice.