Contribution short abstract:

New Travellers formed as a mobile alternative community in the UK in the 1970s and 80s. After developing their own norms and practices, which were inversions of those of mainstream society, their lifestyle was criminalised forcing most into housing. How do they now negotiate these opposing rules?

Contribution long abstract:

Work on New Travellers, a mobile alternative community formed during the 1970s and 80s in the UK, describes them as being from all sectors of society. However, after coming together they quickly developed group norms and practices. Despite this, as their paramount values are based around freedom, from the state and any other kind of external limitations, part of adhering to their group norms also included transgressing them.

This kind of inversion of rules also extended to how they transformed the norms and practices of mainstream society to often do the opposite. For example, the ideal of cleanliness was converted to dirtiness, work ethic to anti-work, consumerism to owning nothing of value. Coming from a modern, individualistic society, New Travellers purposefully based their lifestyle around communal living, including (to varying degrees) cooking, eating, and childrearing. This attracted negative attention from media, the state and much of mainstream society; with the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 being implemented purposefully to stop their lifestyle.

Since then, many New Travellers moved abroad where rules were less stringent, moved into housing or onto private land, or died early deaths. However, thousands of people still identify as being part of the group, and though scattered in geographical space, still interact together in online space. Considering this, how do New Travellers now living apart from their community negotiate adhering to the rules of mainstream society and New Traveller norms, values and practices, where these are, by definition, opposite to those of the wider society?