Marginalisation and Mixed Feelings: Supporting Students of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller Heritage Imagining Higher Education in the UK

Gypsy, Roma and Travellers (GRT) are a highly marginalised UK higher education minority with patchy targeted policy interventions. Drawing on qualitative interview data with education professionals working with GRT and with GRT young people, families and activists, the article compares attitudes, expectations, and desires around higher education. Firstly, the way in which university outreach can essentialise GRT people and the need to nuance these regulatory and normative practices is discussed (Burke 2012). Tensions for GRT people imagining higher education and navigating complex identity transitions of ethnic invisibility are next explored (Abajo and Carrasco 2004; Padilla-Carmona et al. 2017) alongside worries around coming out (Pantea 2015). Finally, the article identifies the cruel optimism (Berlant 2011) in desiring education as a form of social mobility, particularly when institutions are not inclusive of GRT. From this, an urgent need is identified for contextually-sensitive GRT outreach for the academy’s promises to be meaningfully inclusive.