Thick skins in place, thick skins out of place: re-placing homeless bodies in spaces of care

Abstract

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

“He ganado el balón de oro como Messi”: estudio sobre una experiencia de danza inclusiva con personas sin hogar

“…En una etnografía con personas sin hogar en París, Graeff (2012) señala la dificultad de "sacar la calle del cuerpo" en el trabajo con personas sin hogar. Su investigación y otras similares (Bourlessas, 2020;Jolley, 2020) estudian cómo las dificultades de higiene y la incomodidad de estar en la calle tienen una repercusión inmediata y sistemática en el cuerpo, que es cada vez más susceptible de sufrir experiencias de humillación y estigmatización social y puede convertirse en un creador negativo de autoestima. En el contexto del taller, el cuerpo adquirió un papel esencial, al tratarse de un taller de danza.…”

Legal and cultural geographies of displacement: home un making through material belongings

“…Following Michele Lancione's (2017) work on the resistance of dispossessed Roma people occupying a street in Bucharest, material belongings making up people's (former) homes become elements of resistance: devices through which evicted tenants gain visibility and practice solidarity in the aftermath of their eviction. Together, material belongings support precariously housed subjects to negotiate in/exclusion (Bourlessas, 2022) and cope with vulnerability (Blomley et al, 2020;Lancione, 2017;McCarthy, 2020).…”

Distal supports, capabilities, and growth‐focused recovery: A comparison of Housing First and the staircase continuum of care

“…Although community integration may be an aspiration of traditional services providers for their clients, they tend to emphasize rehabilitation‐focused goals such as abstinence, treatment compliance, and behavioral change (Manning & Greenwood, 2019). Moreover, the typical configuration of these services as congregate accommodation with onsite supports means they are readily identifiable within a neighborhood, making residents visible and easily stigmatized targets of discrimination (e.g., Armstrong et al, 2021; Bhui et al, 2006; Bourlessas, 2022). For these reasons, we hypothesized that participants in TAU will report lower levels of distal support than participants in HF programs.…”