This volume is an exploration of the image that is the Traveller/Gypsy, the migrant and the "Other". Rapid developments as relating to the global flows of cultural diaspora have both overcome spatial/temporal distance and separation and have created enhanced necessity for the exploration of issues relating to cross-cultural and identity representation. In an age of mass migration and mass-media dissemination, a wide combination of forces have ruptured and blurred the borders of the modern nation-state. These forces have created the trans-national contexts for scholarly enquiry as relating to such scholarly disciplines as Irish Studies, Traveller Studies, Romani Studies and Diaspora and Migration Studies. As outlined in these essays, the diversity that encompasses traditionally migrant and diaspora communities such as Travellers and Gypsies frequently disrupt those narratives which have defined hitherto dominant cultures and thereby serve to hybridise the discourse.
