SWEPT UP LIVES？RE-ENVISAGING THE HOMELESS CITY

• Presents innovative ethnographic research which suggests an important shift in perspective in the analysis and understanding of urban homelessness
• Emphasizes the ethical and emotional geographies of care embodied and performed within homeless services spaces
• Suggests that different homelessness ‘scenes’ develop in different places due to varied historical, political, and cultural responses to the problems faced

Jon May is Professor of Geography at Queen Mary University of London. He has published extensively on the geographies of homelessness and is the co-author or co-editor of five books including, most recently, Global Cities at Work: New Migrant Divisions of Labour (2009).

Sarah Johnsen is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Housing Policy, University of York. She has published widely in the field of homelessness and social policy.

List of tables

Series Editor’s Preface

Acknowledgements

List of acronyms

1. Introduction: Re-envisioning the homeless city

2. From neoliberalisation to post-secularism

3. Tactics and performativities in the homeless city

4. ‘He’s not homeless, he shouldn’t have any food’: Outdoor relief in a postsecular age

5. ‘It’s like you can almost be normal again’: Refuge and resource in Britain’s day centres

6. ‘It’s been a tough night, huh?’: Hopelessness (and hope) in Britain’s homeless hostels

7. Big city blues: Uneven geographies of provision in the homeless city

8. On the margins of the homeless city: Caring for homeless people in rural areas

9. Conclusions

References

Index