The paper relates homelessness to the 'new mobilities paradigm' by highlighting mobility's constitutive character in homeless geographies, and the politics involved in the making of mobile homeless subjectivities in central Athens. Ethnographic material demonstrates that, within the city's institutional and material context, a specific sense of mobility prevails, which may reflect broader mentalities of managing the poor in times of austerity. The case of a night shelter exemplifies how this institutional sense materialises, whereas crucial frictions are involved in the city's homeless geographies. Yet it is the homeless subjects that embody, experience and make these mobilities and frictions meaningful and political.

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Given the scarcity of methodological reflections by geographers studying homelessness, and drawing from ethnographic research in Athens, this paper provides an empirical reflexive account of the complexities of practising homelessness research through “spaces of care.” Emphasising the institutional nature of these spaces, it highlights the role of institutions, such as NGOs and public authorities, in shaping certain local contexts for geographic research. Precisely, the circulation of specific homeless‐related discourses throughout spaces of care shapes the “viscous field” of institutions, wherein research moves become difficult and subject positionings are set a priori. Therein, the two‐faced figure of Janus becomes the metaphor for the geographer in the viscous field, who embodies simultaneously two faces‐roles: of researcher and volunteer. Afterwards, a focus on bodies highlights the emotional and performative aspects of the encounters with research participants. Eventually, four‐plus‐one ethical pro‐positions for practising geographic research on homelessness are given in place of conclusions. Overall, the paper is an empirical contribution to institutional geographies, their methodologies, and the difficulties, complexities, and negotiations for researchers‐volunteers. The “trouble of institutions” may also be a methodological trouble for geography practitioners in research sites such as spaces of care, where researchers‐volunteers, participants, and institutions become entangled with one another.

The 'homeless body' has been largely constructed in scholarship as a 'discursive body' while it has been inadequately grounded in empirical space. Drawing from ethnographic research, this article attempts a twofold, gradual re-placement: a conceptual replacement of the 'discursive homeless body' as material bodies, which shape homeless subjectivities; and a spatial re-placement of these bodies in Athens' formal spaces of care, where homeless subjects respond to the provided care through a personal body work. The replacement is conceptualized through 'stigma dialectic', namely, the continuous embodiment and emplacement of the homeless stigma within these spaces. There, the stigmatized as 'dirty' homeless subjects achieve a geographical-social ordering as visceral practices of cleanliness make homeless bodies 'in place', closer to the nonstigmatized staff and volunteers. At the same time though, and while 'in place', homeless subjects try to make their bodies 'out of place', away from other, stigmatized homeless bodies. Informed by literatures on geographies of care, visceral geographies, and by performative approaches to homeless geographies, the article suggests that the personal body work might have significant implications for a neoliberalizing ethic of care, the spaces it structures and is enabled through, and the homeless subjectivities it structures, especially in times of welfare restructuring.Pieles gruesas en su lugar, pieles gruesas fuera de lugar: reubicación de cuerpos sin hogar en espacios de cuidado RESUMEN El 'cuerpo sin hogar' se ha construido en gran medida en los estudios académicos como un 'cuerpo discursivo', mientras que no se ha basado adecuadamente en el espacio empírico. Partiendo de la investigación etnográfica, este artículo intenta una reubicación gradual y doble: una sustitución conceptual del 'cuerpo discursivo sin hogar' como cuerpos materiales, que dan forma a las subjetividades sin hogar; y una reubicación espacial de estos cuerpos en los espacios formales de cuidado de Atenas, donde los ARTICLE HISTORY

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