Description
Since 2010, homelessness has steadily increased in London, duplicating in the case of rough sleeping (Fitzpatrick, et al., 2018, p. xiv). In response to this, and largely as a consequence of activism and lobbying, the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 was passed in order to tackle this issue by preventing and relieving homelessness at the local level —yet not without criticism (Butler, 2018). However, these alleviation policies were coupled with a series of often less noticed practices; under the Vagrancy Act 1824, the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014, inter alia, a myriad of security professionals have criminalised begging, imposed civil measures, contained through deterrents, such as physical deterrents or noise pollution.
In this paper I will explore these practices of (in)security—and their conditions of possibility—in the city of London, deconstructing not only the janus faced identity of the homeless subject as both threat and victim. To this end, I will respond to the following questions: (1) What practices of (in)security are homeless people subjected to? and (2) How are these official (in)security practices legitimized?, in order to delve into the modes in which vulnerability and agency are (re)produced in the discourses of different agents in order to justify their practices.
For that purpose, using an International Political Sociology methodology, I draw on in-depth interviews with key informants that aim to map some of the actors involved in the “management of homelessness”. On one hand, I examine whether justifications based on vulnerability necessarily rely on “removing” the agency of the subject. On the other, I argue that to understand the justifications of homelessness (in)securitisation, we need to look at the ways in which these are interwoven with discourses on migration. I will also show how official discourses will not always emphasise vulnerability, insisting instead on a “greater good” (highlighting the utilitarian logics that underline their arguments).
