"For the Protection of the Children": The Politics of Minority Childhood in Ireland

This article examines the politics of minority childhood in Ireland through an analysis of dominant discourses and published biographical and autobiographical accounts. The focus is on the official constructions and experiences of Traveller children during the decades preceding the implementation of a state settlement policy in the mid-1960s. Minority childhood is discussed within the context of anti-Traveller racism, the political economy of Irish childhood, and the formulation of a Traveller settlement policy.