Traveller community and health practitioner stories of self and each other: a poststructural narrative analysis
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Date
08/07/2019Author
Forster, Natalie
Metadata
Abstract
Research attention to Gypsy and Traveller health has grown in recent decades and
highlights significant inequalities in health and access to services experienced by
these groups. Existing work in this area tends to prioritise consideration of how
Gypsies and Travellers speak from a position of belonging to their particular ethnic
or cultural group, often producing fixed and universal claims about the health beliefs
and experiences of Traveller Communities. Little research explores the social
production of Gypsy and Traveller health identities, or how ethnicity may intersect
with wider identity positions in Traveller Community accounts of health. In addition,
health practitioner and Traveller Community accounts have rarely been considered
alongside one another, and the ways health practitioners construct identities in
relation to their work with Traveller Communities has largely evaded the gaze of
health and sociological research.
This thesis sought to contribute to understanding of these areas. It examined the
identity positions Traveller Community members and health practitioners project for
themselves and each other, and where these identities collide or coalesce in stories
of health interactions. Poststructuralist informed narrative inquiry guided interviews
with Romany Gypsies, Irish Travellers and health practitioners working with these
groups. This approach was chosen for its view of identity as multiple and shifting,
and as it enables concurrent attention to both the discourses governing possibilities
for talk about Traveller Community health, and how actors work within these
constraints to give accounts of themselves.
An analysis of participant narratives reveals two overarching areas of potential
concordance or dissonance in the identity positions claimed by health practitioners
and Traveller Community members. The first contrasts the ‘body work’ practitioners
undertook to downplay ‘professional’ identity and position themselves as close to
community members, with Gypsy and Traveller requests for greater access to
professional advice and medical screening. The second concerns divergence in the
extent to which Traveller Communities were presented, and presented themselves,
as future-oriented in relation to their health. Drawing on poststructuralist theory, I
argue that representations of Gypsy and Traveller orientations to time and space are
central in the positioning of these groups as compliant or resistant to health advice,
and to understanding relations of power and resistance in health interactions. The
thesis generates insights for communication between health workers and Traveller
Community members, suggesting a need for attention not only to cultural or
structural barriers, but reflection on how practice is influenced by the stories we tell
about Traveller Communities, the identities practitioners claim for themselves in
relation to their work with ‘disadvantaged’ groups, and the interests these serve.