Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-ndw9j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-18T03:20:28.572Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Hot Tea, Dry Toast and the Responsibilisation of Homeless People

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 2010

Martin Whiteford
Martin Whiteford*
Affiliation:
School of Health & Social Care, Christchurch Road, Bournemouth E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article sets out to critically explore the expanding and contested vocabulary of ‘responsible citizenship’ as it relates to homeless people in a small market town in rural Dorset. Taking as its reference point the controversial decision to introduce a payment system for hot food at a day-centre for rough sleepers, I offer a concrete illustration of how the desire to cultivate ‘active’ and ‘responsible’ citizens is experienced and perceived by people who are affected by homelessness and other dimensions of ‘deep’ social exclusion. My concern here is to show that the logic of ‘responsibilisation’, which I suggest aims to ensure that difficult and troublesome individuals are made to accept prevailing social norms, draws its sustenance from a more fundamental concern with refashioning the meaning of contemporary citizenship. In so doing, I focus on the particular problems with this approach, using an alternative approach that argues that the problems and vulnerabilities associated with entrenched and chronic homelessness remain a significant obstacle to social inclusion and meaningful participation in community life.

Type
Articles
Information
Social Policy and Society , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , April 2010 , pp. 193 - 205
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adcock, D. (2007a), ‘Grime warning for homeless’, Dorset Echo, 25 January 2007, 5.Google Scholar
Adcock, D. (2007b), ‘Anger at “Secret” meeting over the homeless’, Dorset Echo, 1 June 2007, at http:www.dorsetecho.co.uk/search/144064/ [accessed 1 February 2008].Google Scholar
Adcock, D. (2007c), ‘Call to provide rough sleepers with more help’, Dorset Echo, 24 February 2007, at http://www.dorsetecho.co.uk/search/1217300/ [accessed 2 February 2008].Google Scholar
Baines, S. and Hardill, I. (2008), ‘At least I can do something: the work of volunteering in a community beset by worklessness’, Social Policy and Society, 7, 3, 307–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
BBC (2007), ‘Cameron civic responsibility push’, BBC News, 23 April 2007, at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6582423.stm [accessed 3 February 2008]Google Scholar
Booth, S. (2006), ‘Eating rough: food sources and acquisition practices of homeless young people in Adelaide, South Australia’, Public Health Nutrition, 9, 212–18.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Burgess, R. G. (1984), In the Field: An Introduction to Field Research, London: Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar
Callinicos, A. (2001), Against the Third Way: An Anti-Capitalist Critique, Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Carey, M. (2008), ‘Everything must go? The privatisation of state social work’, British Journal of Social Work, 38, 5, 900–17.Google Scholar
Clarke, J. (2005), ‘New Labour's citizens: activated, empowered, responsibilized, abandoned?’, Critical Social Policy, 25, 4, 447–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cloke, P., Johnsen, S. and May, J. (2005), ‘Exploring ethos? Discourses of care in the provision of emergency services for single homeless people’, Environment and Planning A, 77, 385–402.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dean, J., Goodlad, R. and Rosengard, A. (2000), ‘Citizenship in the new welfare market: the purposes of housing advice services’, Journal of Social Policy, 29, 2, 229–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dean, M. (1999), Govermentality: Power and Rule in Modern Societies, London: Sage.Google Scholar
DeVerteuil, G. (2006), ‘The local state and homeless shelters: beyond revanchism?’, Cities, 23, 2, 109–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duneier, M. (2002), ‘What kind of combat sport is sociology?’, American Journal of Sociology, 107, 6, 1551–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dwyer, P. (1998), ‘Conditional citizens? Welfare rights and responsibilities in the late 1990s’, Critical Social Policy, 18, 4, 493–517.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferguson, I. (2008), Reclaiming Social Work: Challenging Neo-Liberalism and Promoting Social Justice, London: Sage Publications.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Flint, J. (2006), ‘Housing and the new governance of conduct’, Flint, J. (ed.), Housing, Urban Governance and Anti-Social Behaviour, Bristol: Policy Press, pp. 19–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foucault, M. (2003), ‘Governmentality’, in Rabinow, P. and Rose, N. (eds.), The Essential Foucault: Selections from Essential Works of Foucault 1954–1984, London: The New Press, pp. 126–44.Google Scholar
Fraser, N. and Gordon, L. (1994), ‘A genealogy of dependency: tracing a key word of the US welfare state’, Signs, 19, 2, 309–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fitzpatrick, S. and Jones, A. (2005), ‘Pursuing social justice or social cohesion? Coercion in street homelessness policies in England’, Journal of Social Policy, 34, 3, 389–406.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gowan, T. (2002), ‘The exclusion/punishment nexus: how imprisonment leads to homelessness and back again’, Ethnography, 3, 4, 500–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Home Office (2003), Respect and Responsibility: Taking a Stand against Anti-Social Behaviour, Cm 5778, London: Home Office.Google Scholar
Homeless Link (2006), ‘Good practice in education, training and employment’, at http://www.handbooks.homeless.org.uk/ete [accessed 18 July 2008].Google Scholar
Homeless Link (2008), ‘Policy information’, personal email, 16 July 2008 [retrieved 1 February 2009].Google Scholar
Howe, L. (1985), ‘Deserving and undeserving practice in an urban local social security office’, Journal of Social Policy, 14, 1, 49–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Howe, L. (1998), ‘Scrounger, worker, beggarman, cheat: the dynamics of unemployment and the politics of resistance in Belfast’, The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 4, 3, 531–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Imrie, R. and Raco, M. (eds.) (2003), Urban Renaissance? New Labour, Community and Urban Policy, Bristol: Policy Press.Google Scholar
Johnsen, S., Cloke, P. and May, J. (2005), ‘Spaces of care or fear? Day centres for homeless people’, Social and Cultural Geography, 6, 6, 787–811.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kivisto, P. and Faist, T. (2007), Citizenship, Discourse, Theory and Transnational Prospects, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.Google Scholar
Lund, B. (1999), ‘Ask not what your community can do for you: obligations, New Labour and welfare reform, Critical Social Policy, 19, 4, 447–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacLeavy, J. (2008), ‘Neoliberalising subjects: the legacy of new labour's construction of social exclusion in local governance’, Geoforum, 39, 5, 1657–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McIntyre, Z. and McKee, K. (2008), ‘Governance and sustainability in Glasgow: connecting symbolic capital and housing consumption to regeneration’, Area, 40, 4, 481–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marshall, T. H. (1950), Citizenship and Social Class and Other Essays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Mooney, G. and Fyfe, N. (2006), ‘New labour and community protests: the case of the govanhill pool campaign’, Local Economy, 21, 2, 136–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moore, S. (2008), ‘Neighbourhood policing and the punitive community’, Crime Prevention and Community Safety, 10, 190–202.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nixon, J., Hodge, N., Parr, S., Willis, B. and Hunter, C. (2007), ‘Anti-social behaviour and disability in the UK’, People, Place and Policy Online, 2, 1, 37–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Orton, M. (2004), ‘Irresponsible citizens? New Labour, citizenship and the case of non-payment of local taxation’, Critical Social Policy, 24, 4, 504–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paddison, R., Docherty, I. and Goodlad, R. (2008), ‘Responsible participation and housing: restoring democratic theory to the scene’, Housing Studies, 23, 1, 129–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pawson, H. and Davidson, E. (2008), ‘Radically divergent? Homelessness policy and practice in post-devolution Scotland’, European Journal of Housing Policy, 8, 1, 39–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Phelan, E. and Norris, M. (2008), ‘Neo-corporatist governance of homeless services in Dublin: reconceptualization, incorporation and exclusion’, Critical Social Policy, 28, 1, 51–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rose, N. (2001), ‘Community, citizenship and the Third Way’, in Merydyth, D. and Minson, J. (eds.), Citizenship and Cultural Policy, London: Sage, pp. 1–17.Google Scholar
Singh, P. (2005), No Home, No Job: Moving from Transitional Spaces, London: Off the Streets and into Work.Google Scholar
Westminster City Council (2009), ‘Are you killing with kindness?’, at www.killingwithkindness.com [accessed 2 February 2009].Google Scholar
White, S. (2003), The Civic Minimum: On the Rights and Obligations of Economic Citizenship, Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whiteford, M. (2007), ‘Making the connection: the state of the homelessness industry’, Parity, 20, 10, 21–5.Google Scholar
Whiteford, M. (2008), ‘Street homelessness and the architecture of citizenship’, People, Place and Policy Online, 2, 2, 88–100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whiteford, M. (2009), ‘No one left out? The antinomies of community’, Housing Studies Association Newsletter, at http://housingstudiesassociation.blogspot.com [accessed 9 May 2009].Google Scholar
Wintour, P. (2008), ‘Labour: if you want a council house, find a job’, The Guardian, 8 February 2008, at http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/feb/05/uk.topstories3/ [accessed 18 July 2008].Google Scholar
Wolch, J. (1989), ‘The shadow state: government and voluntary sector’, in Wolch, J. and Dear, M. (eds.), The Power of Geography: How Territory Shapes Social Life, London: Unwin, pp. 197–221.Google Scholar