Irish Travellers: The Unsettled Life by Sharon Bohn Gmelch and George Gmelch (review)

In Irish Travellers: The Unsettled Life, Sharon Bohn Gmelch and George Gmelch eloquently weave the voices of Travellers, their settled supporters, and the authors themselves to give rare insight into how life has changed for Travellers in light of forced settlement and drastic economic changes in Ireland. The authors use multiple perspectives to expand difficult conversations about changes in the Traveller community that have accompanied settlement and modernization, including increased rates of suicide, unemployment, alcohol abuse, and involvement in the drug trade. At the same time, they discuss positive transformations, such as access to education as well as to modern sanitation and conveniences. The authors acknowledge that in this book, they focus on their own observations and the topics that Travellers brought up in their conversations with them. Therefore, the book provides an introduction to the history of Travellers and to the current conversations surrounding them rather than a thorough literature review, although the endnotes provide a helpful launching pad for that endeavor.

The first chapter gives an overview of the complicated history of Irish Travellers and their interactions with settled people. Chapter 2 presents an account of the authors' experience of living among Travellers as young American doctoral students in 1971–1972. They are candid about the struggles and triumphs of fieldwork as well as its unpredictable nature. Indeed, this chapter provides a useful case study in how to effectively negotiate uncomfortable fieldwork situations. Chapter 3 focuses on the authors' initial reactions upon returning to Ireland in 2012 and explains how their return became the subject of the documentary Unsettled: From Tinker to Traveller (Scratch Films, 2012).

Chapters 4 and 5 document the authors' travels in Cork and life at a halting site, a government-sanctioned site where Travellers can legally park their caravans. The latter chapter highlights the narrative of a middle-aged Travelling woman they met in Cork, Kathleen Mongan Keenan, who offers her perspective on cultural change, life on the road, and the uneasy transition to settled life.

The following three chapters describe the authors' travels through Ennis and Galway. Chapter 6 includes an interaction in Ennis with several Travellers but focuses primarily on Pat Galvin, a settled man who actively supported Travellers in the 1970s and continues to work for Traveller rights and equality. This conversation, like others with settled advocates, offers insight into how the discourses among settled people concerning Travellers have changed. Moving to Galway in chapter 7, the authors recount a meeting with John Donoghue, who discusses the horrors visited upon Traveller children who were taken from their families and placed in industrial schools. He passionately explains the impact these schools had upon a generation of Travellers. Chapter 8 presents Paddy Houlahan's narrative of how he came to work with Traveller youth and his thoughts on how changes in Ireland, like immigration and increased affluence, have affected Travellers.

After a history of Travellers in Tuam in chapter 9, chapters 10 and 11 use the narratives of two Travellers, Mary Warde Moriarty and Martin Ward, to understand the factors that made this particular area more successful than others in establishing peaceful relations between Travellers and the settled population. The most notable factors were collaboration between settled people and Travellers toward common goals and the opportunity for Travellers to take on active, responsible roles in the community. Chapter 12 depicts the authors' journey to Dublin and their interactions with several groups of Travellers and settled people along the way. They compare a wedding to which they are invited to one they attended when they began their fieldwork in 1971; in doing so, they explore how Traveller rituals have changed. The following chapter focuses on Martin Collins, co-director of Pavee Point, a nongovernmental Traveller activist organization in Dublin. After explaining Collins' path to activism, the focus shifts to his assertion that Travellers should be granted status as a distinct ethnicity. His narrative includes a list of...