Voyagers of the smooth space. Navigating emotional landscapes: Roma street vendors in Scotland

Based on ethnographic research, the article explores the way Romanian Roma street vendors construct/project their space of movement. It shows how the space of movement is created and recreated by people on the move, through practices and emotional experiences, and becomes, in Deleuzian terms, 'smooth'. The Romanian Roma street vendors experience contradictory emotions and uncertainties, which nevertheless do not restrict their movement but, on the contrary, impel them to move further. Through begging, they lose fixity in their occupational identities. Their journeys become fluid spaces, involving continuous change throughout their routes. Emotions and dreams of becoming constitute their space as 'existential', performative/processual. Their selves are fragmented by survival needs and dreams of becoming, between practices of mobility and 'dreams of presence'. In this sense, the article shows that Roma street vendors project their flexible space-in-the-making by using 'emotional landscapes' as 'tentative mappings' in their travels, both narrated and practised. In this process, they become voyagers of the smooth space who follow loose routes, 'points of relay', along which home is nevertheless a fixed location.