Global InformationIrish Travellers information
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|---|---|
 Irish Travellers in 1954 | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Republic of Ireland | 30,987 (2016)[1] |
| Northern Ireland | 2,609 (2021)[2] |
| Languages | |
| Hiberno-English, Irish, Shelta | |
| Religion | |
| Predominantly Roman Catholic | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Irish | |
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| Irish people |
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Irish Travellers (Irish: an lucht siúil, meaning the walking people), also known as Pavees or Mincéirs[3] (Shelta: Mincéirí)[4] are a traditionally peripatetic indigenous[5] ethno-cultural group originating in Ireland.[6][7][8]
They are predominantly English speaking, though many also speak Shelta, a language of mixed English and Irish origin.[6] The majority of Irish Travellers are Roman Catholic, the predominant religion in the Republic of Ireland. They are one of several groups identified as "Travellers" in the UK and Ireland.
Despite often being incorrectly referred to as "Gypsies",[6] Irish Travellers are not genetically related to the Romani, who are of Indo-Aryan origin.[9][10] Genetic analysis has shown Travellers to be of Irish extraction, and that they likely diverged from the settled Irish population in the 1600s, probably during the time of the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland. Centuries of cultural isolation have led Travellers to become genetically distinct from the settled Irish.[11] Traveller rights groups long advocated for ethnic status from the Irish government, succeeding in 2017.[12]
Irish Traveller communities are located in Ireland, the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada.[13] As of 2016, there were 32,302 Travellers within Ireland.[14] They represent 0.7% of the total population of the Republic of Ireland.[15] There are different estimates about the size of the total population of people with Traveller ancestry, because many people of Traveller descent do not declare themselves Travellers. The United Kingdom alone is believed to be home to up to 300,000 Traveller people.[16][17] The British Government considers Travellers resident in the UK to form part of the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller (GRT) community.[18]
- ^ "6. Ethnicity and Irish Travellers" (PDF). p. 60. Archived (PDF) from the original on 9 October 2022. Retrieved 31 July 2019.
- ^ "Census 2021 main statistics ethnicity tables". 7 September 2022. Retrieved 11 December 2022.
- ^ Joyce, Sindy (11 December 2018). "A Brief History of the Insitutionalisation [sic] of Discrimination Against Irish Travellers". Irish Council for Civil Liberties. Archived from the original on 7 June 2022. Retrieved 28 September 2020.
- ^ Mayock, Breda (15 April 2020). "The Role of Hair in Traveller Culture". Education Matters.ie. Retrieved 15 September 2020.
- ^ Refugees, United Nations High Commissioner for. "Refworld | World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples - Ireland : Travellers". Refworld. Retrieved 26 December 2022.
- ^ a b c Wolniak, Michal (2016) [2016]. "Travelling through Shades of Whiteness: Irish Travellers as Inferior Whites". In Kirkland, Ewan (ed.). Shades of Whiteness. Leiden and Boston: Brill Publishers. pp. 119–131. doi:10.1163/9781848883833_011. ISBN 978-1-84888-383-3. S2CID 201423395.
- ^ Ethnicity and the American cemetery by Richard E. Meyer. 1993. "... though many of them crossed the Atlantic in centuries past to play their trade".
- ^ Questioning Gypsy identity: ethnic narratives in Britain and America by Brian Belton
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
Griffinwas invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Russell, Cliodhna (9 February 2017). "Study on ancestry of Irish Travellers details genetic connection to settled community". TheJournal.ie.
- ^ Gilbert, Edmund; Carmi, Shai; Ennis, Sean; Wilson, James F.; Cavalleri, Gianpiero L. (9 February 2017). "Genomic insights into the population structure and history of the Irish Travellers" (PDF). Scientific Reports. 7 (1). Nature Research: 42187. Bibcode:2017NatSR...742187G. doi:10.1038/srep42187. ISSN 2045-2322. PMC 5299991. PMID 28181990. S2CID 16756740. Archived (PDF) from the original on 13 May 2022. Retrieved 13 May 2022.
- ^ Kennedy, Jason; White, Gavin (1 March 2017). "Hundreds of Irish Travellers left outside Leinster House as Taoiseach formally recognises ethnic status". The Independent.
- ^ "Questioning Gypsy". paveepoint.ie. Archived from the original on 1 October 2011.
- ^ Rieder, Maria (2018). "Irish Travellers' view on Cant: what folk criteria of languageness tell us about the community". Language Awareness. 27 (1–2): 41. doi:10.1080/09658416.2018.1431242. hdl:10344/6618. S2CID 148599552.
- ^ "Irish Travellers - Demographics - CSO - Central Statistics Office". www.cso.ie. Retrieved 25 August 2020.
- ^ "Tackling inequalities faced by Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities - Women and Equalities Committee - House of Commons". Retrieved 4 April 2023.
- ^ "Tackling inequalities faced by Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities". www.parliament.uk. 5 April 2019. Archived from the original on 7 March 2022.
- ^ Acton, Thomas; Acton, Jennifer; Cemlyn, Sara; Ryder, Andrew (2016). "Why we need to up our Numbers Game: A non-parametric approach to the methodology and politics of the demography of Roma, Gypsy, Traveller and other ethnic populations" (PDF). Radical Statistics (114). Retrieved 7 January 2024.