Disruptive Journeys: Multi-Sited Archives of ‘Invasion’ and the Everyday

This article uses print and associated visual media to investigate the sensationalist reportage of, and the local responses to, a transnational journey undertaken over a century ago. Referred to at the time as the ‘German Gipsy Invasion’, this was a widely reported and highly debated journey of German Roma and Sinti across the UK. The exploration of the media coverage of this event provides a way to geographically and narratively track the activities and local interactions undertaken within a temporary and high-profile migration. It also enables the exploration of domestic, locale-specific discourses around migration, spectacle and the everyday. This paper seeks to explore how, and where, the event was documented in order to explore how it was remembered and later archived. It asks how a perceived spectacle, and the memory of that spectacle, is subsumed into the everydayness of place.