Homelessness and citizenship: exploring the meaning and negotiation of place, space and geography for rough sleepers.

Abstract

This doctoral thesis, drawing on a detailed ethnographic study of a small voluntary day-centre for rough sleepers in West Dorset, sets out to explore and elucidate the relationship between contemporary citizenship and 'on-street' homelessness. From this empirically grounded basis I show how the vocabulary of rights and responsibilities is profoundly intertwined in the local governance of homelessness. I situate this mode and style of governance within the contours of public policy efforts that seek to recode behaviour and lifestyles deemed to be deviant, irresponsible and, ultimately, self-excluding. In doing this, I offer a critique of the moral economy of responsibility that draws extensively on the perceptions and experiences of homeless people. Ethically, and in conclusion, emphasis is placed on the importance of pursuing critically engaged and empirically sensitive scholarship which takes homeless people's agency into account in ways that have the potential to 'subvert' political and policy judgements linking contemporary citizenship with 'on-street' homelessness.