Welcome to the Roma? Education practitioners attempts to resist a dominant negative discourse about Roma Children.

This article critically examines the dilemmas experienced by education practitioners as they
work with schools in two towns to overcome resistance to Roma children newly arrived in England
from Slovakia. Through case study I analyse how practitioners describe, recognise, understand
and respond to a prevalent negative discourse about Roma children. Such a discourse
obscures and validates (at an institutional level) inequality and breaches of human rights for
Roma children. Bauman’s theory of the ‘outsider’and ‘stranger’ illuminates the complex operation
of such discourse. Some education practitioners were able to resist the dominant negative
discourses and present alternative responses; others retreated into their personal space where
they maintained the familiar by replicating or extending the discourse. Education practitioners
need opportunities to connect the ‘personal troubles of the milieu’ with the ‘public issues of the
social structure’ (Mills, 1959). In this way practitioners may shape their own practice in ways
that resist the hegemonic structures that perpetuate inequality for Roma children.