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