** J Kristeva ‘en être ou pas’ (2000) Libération, 20 July. (‘The question “to be or not to be” is replaced by “to belong or not to belong”’: present writer's translation.)

1. See in particular Purvis, T and Hunt, A ‘Identity versus Citizenship: Transformations in the Discourses and Practices of Citizenship’ (1999) 8 Social & Legal Studies 457.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2. J-P Faye La Frontière (Arles: Actes Sud, 1995) p 15. ‘Thus, the frontier is first of all a woman.’

3. Stychin, C ‘New Labour, New “Britain?” Constitutionalism, Sovereignty, and Nation/State in Transition’ (1999) 19 Studies in Law, Politics and Society 139 at 139–140Google Scholar. Stychin offers a further exploration of these important themes and issues in ‘A Stranger to its Laws: Sovereign Bodies, Global Sexualities, and Transnational Citizens’ (2000) 27 J Law & Society 601.

4. Faye, n 2 above, at 141. The very idea of ‘Britain’ is increasingly being called into question. Then Home Secretary Jack Straw's suggestion that a British football team could replace the current home nations' individual sides created a furore. Devolution in Scotland and Wales necessarily raises important issues of Scottish and Welsh identity and nationhood and their problematic relationship with any understanding of ‘Britain’ as an entity. Further explorations of these intriguing and important questions are beyond the scope of this paper.

5. There are several words used to describe the group in question here - Gypsy, Rom, Roma, Romany, etc, not to mention others with whom they are often associated in the popular imagination, most commonly ‘travellers’. The semiotics and politics of group identity, involving issues of language, ethnicity, ‘race’, kinship, etc, are complex and multi-layered and are beyond the main focus of this study. See generally, Fraser, A The Gypsies (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995)Google Scholar; Fonseca, I Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey (London: Vintage, 1996)Google Scholar.

6. (2001) AC 489.

7. (2001) AC 489 at 491.

8. The broader questions posed by issues of nomad-ness are beyond the scope of this paper. Some recent feminist interventions have begun to explore ideas of transnational location and relations with the nation state in ways which are important for this more extensive project. See eg, Kaplan, C Questions of Travel: Postmodem Discourses of Displacement (Duke: Duke University Press, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Kaplan, C, Alarcon, N and Moallem, M (eds) Bemeen Woman and Nation: Nationalisms, Transnational Ferninisms and the State (Duke: Duke University Press, 1999)Google Scholar. They do not, however, adequately address nomadism as a new form of ‘citizenship’.

9. See generally Sandland, R ‘The Real, the Simulacrum and the Construction of the “Gypsy” in Law’ (1996) 23 J Law & Society 383.CrossRefGoogle Scholar In the European context, see Willems, W In Search of the True Gypg: From Enlightenment to Final Solution (London: Frank Cass Publishers, 1997).Google Scholar

10. See Freeman, A and Mensch, E ‘The Public/Private Distinction in American Law and Life’ (1987) 36 Buff LR 237–257 Google Scholar. I accept, for the purposes of brevity here, the Freeman and Mensch assertion that…‘anything can be described as either public or private’ (at 249). In other words, the public/private distinction is a powerful rhetorical tool which can be and is deployed for a variety of often-contradictory purposes in legal reasoning. ‘Anything’ must naturally be limited to that which is legally contestable and manipulable according to the accepted normative structure of law and adjudication. See A Hutchinson It's All in the Game (Duke: Duke University Press, 2000).

11. (2001) AC 489 at 500.

12. One might pause to ask here whether a member of the House of Lords is likely to be subjected to the same types of ‘ill-treatment’ as a Slovak Roma family in the imperfect world in which ‘we’ all must live, or whether he might also expect and tolerate similar police inaction and lethargy as a simple practical failure ‘even if steps to prevent this are taken by the state to which we look for our protection’.

13. (2001) AC 489 at 494.

14. See eg O'Nions, H ‘Bonafide or Bogus?: Roma Asylum Seekers from the Czech Republic’ (1999) 3 Web JCLI Google Scholar for an earlier discussion of this issue.

15. Other developments raise more complex issues about Europe, Britain and the idea of national sovereignty. The recent Anglo-French accord, which will permit British immigration and police controls inside French territory to deal with the issue of ‘Eurostar refugees’, can be read within the traditional nation state paradigm of simple co-operation. Another interesting possibility is that such an agreement sits oddly at the forward margins of a political process which creates a borderless Europe protecting itself, as a sovereign entity, from foreign hordes.

16. European Roma Rights Centre ‘United Nations Calls on Governments to Improve Their Treatment of Roma’ (2000) Press Release, 21 August.

17. Hartley-Brewer, J ‘UN criticises government over race relations’ Guardian, 23 August 2000.Google Scholar

18. In late 2000 and the first few months of 2001, in the run-up to the general election, the two major political parties did battle over who was tougher on the refugee issue. In addition to the obvious Freudian implications of who is the better father for the British nation, the debate also must be positioned in relation to anti-Euro Conservative rhetoric, the Labour-supported ban on fox-hunting and all the other issues of British politics which daily problematise the very notion of Britain and Britishness.

19. “‘Outrage” at plans to house Czech gipsies in Deal barracks’ Evening Srandard, 21 October 1997.

20. Utley, T ‘Town's tolerance snaps under gipsy “invasion”’ Daily Telegraph, 25 October 1997 Google Scholar.

21. Ibid.

22. Mills, H ‘No Gypsies please, we're British’ Observer, 26 October 1997 Google Scholar.

23. Sengupta, K ‘Two hurt as racists march in Dover’ Independent, 16 November 1997 Google Scholar.

24. A threat which is now a legal reality as the protection of the public health of the body politic has been, in part at least, effectively privatised through the imposition of fines on private transporters of foreign invaders, or refugees.

25. Sengupta, K ‘Gypsies fly in to appeal for asylum’ Independent, 29 August 1998 Google Scholar; Collcutt, D and Ford, R ‘Hundreds more Gypsies expected to seek asylum’ Times, 29 August 1998.Google Scholar

26. Collcutt and Ford, n 25 above.

27. See O'Nions, H ‘The Marginalisation of Gypsies’ (1995) 3 Web JCLI Google Scholar; Moms, R and Clements, L Gaining Ground: Law Reform for Gypsies and Travellers (Hatfield: University of Hertfordshire Press, 1999).Google Scholar

28. Thompson, T ‘Martin trial witnesses “in campaign of harassment”’ Observer, 30 April 2000.Google Scholar

29. Gillan, A ‘Jury nobbling claims rejected’ Guardian, 26 April 2000.Google Scholar

30. On the role and function of the sovereign, see Murphy, T and Witty, N ‘Crowning Glory: Public Law, Power and the Monarchy’ (2000) 9 Social & Legal Studies 7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31. Hopkins, N ‘More New York than Slough as gunmen spring prisoners in court’ Guardian, 4 August 2000 Google Scholar.

32. Gregoriadis, L ‘Threatening beggar jailed for assault’ Times, 8 March 2000.Google Scholar

33. Stychin (1999), n 3 above, at 157.

34. Kite, M ‘Travellers face new police crackdown’ Times, 2 November 1999.Google Scholar

35. I realise that the majority of Roma in Europe, in fact, live settled lives. My point here is twofold. First, I believe that the potential disruption to our understanding of the nation state, of citizenship and of politics is most clearly embodied in notions of travel, of temporal and spatial uncertainty and that these ideas are in turn best signified in migratory Roma and related groups. Second, I believe that because of the ways in which they have been politically and socially constructed and posited, Roma can really only be ‘mobile’, whatever the sociological empirical reality. One historical example illustrates the centrality of nomadism to Gypsy identity. During the German occupation of France in the Second World War, Gypsies were confined to concentration camps run by the French authorities. The vast majority of French Gypsies were saved from ‘deportation to the east’, however, by the existence of a 1912 French law which defined them in terms of behaviour and lifestyle, ie as nomads, rather than on a purely racial basis. Release from the camps was possible for all who renounced roaming and adopted a sedentary existence: see Peschanski, D Les Tsiganes en France, 1939-1946, (Pans: CNRS Editions, 1994)Google Scholar; M-C Hubert ‘The Internment of Gypsies in France’ in Kemck, D. (ed) In the Shadow of the Swastika: The Gypsies during the Second World War, vol 2 (Hatfield: Centre de recherches tsiganes and the University of Hertfordshire Press, 1999) pp 59–88 Google Scholar.

36. See R Sandland, n 9 above.

37. Ford, R ‘New “zero tolerance” rules for Gypsy sites’ Times, 15 August 2000.Google Scholar

38. The recent crises concerning BSE and foot and mouth, as well as earlier panics over HIV/AIDS, clearly illustrate in other contexts the frightening possibilities of an infected body politic.

39. For an essay situating multiculturalism more broadly within a similar framework to that I adopt here, see Hamacher, W ‘One 2 Many Multiculturalisms’ in de Vries, H and Weber, S (eds) Violence. Identify and Self-Determinarion (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997) pp 284–225.Google Scholar

40. See Liégeois, J-P Roma, Tsiganes, Voyageurs (Strasbourg: Conseil de I'Europe, 1994) p 77ff.Google Scholar

41. On the fate of European Gypsies in the ‘devouring’ (porruimos) or Holocaust, see Kenrick, D and Puxon, G Gypsies under the Swastika (Hatfield, University of Hertfordshire Press, 1995)Google Scholar; cf Lewy, G The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000)Google Scholar.

42. See Fraser, D ‘Law After Auschwitz: Nazi and Jew in the Rechtsstaat’ in Cheah, P, Fraser, D and Grbich, J (eds) Thinking Through the Body of the Law (Sydney and New York: Allen & Unwin and New York University Press, 1996) p 63 Google Scholar; Fraser, D ‘Dead Man Walking: Law and Ethics After Giorgio Agamben's Auschwitz’ (1999) 12 International J Semiotics Law 397 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

43. Home Office Press Release ‘Revised Guidance on Unauthorised Traveller Camps’, 14 August 2000.

44. Cooper, D ‘Regard between strangers: diversity, equality and their construction of public space’ (1998) 57 Critical Social Policy 465 at 472.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

45. (1999) Times, 10 November. More recently, the European Court of Human Rights has confirmed the primacy of planning law in defending and protecting ‘the rights of others’ against invasive Gypsy camps. Chapman v United Kingdom (2001) 10 BHRC 48, Times 30 January, 2001; Coster v UK ibid; Beard v UK ibid; Lee v UK ibid; Jane Smith v UK ibid.

46. Agamben, G Home Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998) pp 174–175 Google Scholar; see also G Agarnben ‘The Camp as the Nomos of the Modern’ in de Vries and Weber, n 39 above, p 106–118.

47. Cooper, D ‘Talmudic Territory? Space, Law and Modernist Discourse’ (1996) 23 J Law & Society 529.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

48. Ibid, at 537.

49. Cooper deals with some of these problems at 542, n 47 above.

50. Johnstone, H ‘Invasion of the born-again Gypsies’ Times, 6 May 1999.Google Scholar

51. Ibid.

52. For an intriguing analysis of the nature of the threat to the body politic in another, but ideologically connected, arena, see Garcia, A Düttmann At Odds with Aids: Thinking and Talking About N Virus (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996) pp 13–18 Google Scholar. J-L Nancy offers intriguing links between and among the virus, the camp and the Other as intruder: see L'Inrrus (Paris: Galilée, 2000) esp p 43.

53. Grbich, J ‘Semiotics and Law Down Under - Aesthetics in Christian Juridico- Theological Tracts: The Wanderings of Faith and Power’ (1999) 12 Int J Semiotics Law 351.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

54. For a related historical discussion, see Fraser, n 42 above.

55. Cooper, n 41 above, p 542.

56. ‘Easter-time attacks on Roma in Slovakia’ (2000) 2 Roma Rights; European Roma Rights Centre ‘Time of the Skinheads: Denial and Exclusion of Roma in Slovakia’ (1997).

57. ‘Mistreatment of Gypsies’ International Herald Tribune, 23 November 2000; European Roma Rights Centre ‘Campland: Racial Segregation of Roma in Italy’ (2000).

58. Cunneen, C, Fraser, D and Tomsen, S ‘Introduction: defining the issues’ in Faces of Hate (Sydney: Hawkins Press, 1997) p 1 at 3Google Scholar.

59. Agamben, n 46 above, p 133.

60. Stychin, n 3 above, at 144.

61. Ibid.

62. Fonseca, n 5 above.

63. On the historical construction of a feminised and dangerous body, see Gilman, S The Jew's Body (New York and London: Routledge, 1991)Google Scholar.

64. Irigaray, L This Sex which Is Not One (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985).Google ScholarPubMed

65. European Roma Rights Centre (2000) 4 Roma Rights, Kosovo.

66. van de Port, M Gypsies, Wars and Other Instances of the Wild: Civilization and its Discontents in a Serbian Town (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1999)Google Scholar; Rhode, D ‘Kosovar Attack on Gypsies Reveals Desire for Revenge’ New York Times, 7 June 1999 Google Scholar; ‘Cri d'alarme pour les Tziganes du Kosovo’ Libération, 7 September 1999; ‘Federal Republic of Yugoslavia: Abuses Against Serbs and Roma in the New Kosovo’ (1999) 11 Human Rights Watch, August; ‘Les Roms craignent pour leur vie au Kosovo’ Libération, 18 January 2001.

67. Agamben, n 46 above, p 131.

68. Cooper, n 44 above, at 475.

69. Esposito, R Communitas: Origin et destin de la communauté (Paris: Presses Universitaire de France, 2000)Google Scholar.

70. Younge, G ‘A Nation is Born’ Guardian, 31 July 2000 Google Scholar; Semo, M ‘Nous voulons la reconnaissance d'une nation rom non territoriale’ Libération, 25 July 2000 Google Scholar. Again, I recognise that the ‘real’ politics of Roma life is much more complex on the issues surrounding questions of ‘assimilation’, ‘integration’ and nationhood.

71. See eg Derrida, J Le monolinguisme de l'autre (Paris: Galiée, 1996) pp 34–35.Google Scholar

72. Stychin, n 3 above, at 158.

73. Joffrin, L ‘La peur du nomade’ Libération, 27 August 1998 Google Scholar: ‘…revendiqué de facto la qualité de citoyens européens.’

74. Esposito, n 69 above.

75. See Derrida, J Adieu (Paris: Galilée, 1970) pp 46–47.Google Scholar

76. Agamben, G The Coming Community (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1993) p 87.Google Scholar

77. See Derrida, J Cosmopolites de tous les pays, encore un effort! (Paris: Galilée, 1997) pp 56–59.Google Scholar