Qui in mezzo a noi. I sinti nello spettacolo viaggiante.

Over the last century, both Italian sinti and other non-sinti travelling entertainers, have occuped the same economical niche and have shared the same itinerant way of life which was structured around seasonal markets and traditional fairs, up to the modern funfairs and circus. Nowadays, funfairs are composite systems characterized by frequent inter-ethnic relations paired with a strong differentiation from the outside world, the gagi’s world. The dichotomy between travelling and settled people strengthens the identity perception of people living in the sphere of funfairs. The marginal condition and the different lifestyle create the illusion of a uniform reality; on the contrary, funfairs are much more complex and multifaceted worlds than one could imagine. Despite sharing the same economic and living space, various and rather dynamic feelings of affiliation are likely to be detected, since they evolve in a daily process of membership self-construction. By employing the ethnografic method, the current study fulfills the purpose to examine how sinti entertainers construct their shared identity starting from some tacit but widely shared reference values.