Homeless Survival and Resistance in the Neoliberal City

Abstract

Chantal Butchinsky aims to explore the ways that neoliberal urban policies have affected the lives of homeless people and discusses how street homeless people deploy survival and resistance strategies in neoliberal cities. Research using an anthropological methodology focuses particularly on the case study of a chronically homeless man, Double Diamond. ‘Roll out’ neoliberal policies since the 1980s have created a ‘new regime’, whereby city organisations consider homeless people who do not accept their services as anti-social individuals who require the control and discipline of experts. Yet ‘resistance’ can be re-conceptualised as a diffuse, at times subversive, idea of a homeless lifestyle and culture, while concepts of ‘unhome’ and ‘economies of makeshift’ facilitate a discussion of how homelessness may be considered an effective strategy of survival.