My experience is it varies site by site, family by family and individual by individual. Stereotypyes can fit cultures but they become fairly destructive (and sometimes even self-fulfilling) when you start applying them to individuals or treating them as rules.
I know quite a few travellers, roma and irish gypsies and the one thing I do know is all three groups are tight and fairly insular, especially from each other. And like any tight groups they are very good at reflecting the attitudes they percieve to be directed towards them.
For the record, I am not from any of these groups and have had relatively few problems with them, when compared to other groups I have interacted with. Drunk anglo-saxon football fans, for instance.
I know quite a few travellers, roma and irish gypsies and the one thing I do know is all three groups are tight and fairly insular, especially from each other. And like any tight groups they are very good at reflecting the attitudes they percieve to be directed towards them.
For the record, I am not from any of these groups and have had relatively few problems with them, when compared to other groups I have interacted with. Drunk anglo-saxon football fans, for instance.