How is homelessness? At Eichstatt-Ingolstadt

Yesterday I presented my approach to homelessness at Eichstatt-Ingolstadt University, for the KU INTERNATIONAL LECTURE SERIES, Space – Society – Economy, of the Department of Geography. It was a great pleasure to be there, among enthusiast people and students, who really care about what they do!

Below you can find abstract and presentation, while here you can read about the upcoming lectures.

How is homelessness? Assemblage thinking and the de-institutionalisation of homelessness

The notion of homelessness bears stigmatisation, power of definition, assumptions on capabilities and will. These and other things do not only guide one own encounter with the poor, but shape policies and interventions as well. The power of such subjectification can be arguably compared to an institutionalisation: homeless people are institutionalised from the molar level (that of societal bias, production of knowledge, the spectacle of poverty) and the molecular one (that of the interaction with service providers, charity makers, police interventions). Relying on original ethnographic material, the presentation shows how these mechanisms of subjectification work, proposing at the same time a renovated theoretical-methodological framework to trace and assess their becoming. The conclusion will argue that the only politically relevant ouvre for homelessness scholarship is that of dismantling, bit by bit, the apparatuses perpetrating the institution of homelessness.

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