The discourse of homelessness, the politics of eradicating homelessness and the missing picture:

Streets as home, workplace, personhood, identity

Marco Heinrich, Niko Rollmann and Khushboo Jain

Published in Issue 8.1 // The Long Read

Keywords: Homelessness, discourse, home-making, pavement dwelling

Abstract:

Homelessness is often framed as a social problem needing state intervention and welfare provisions, but in a discourse-analytic perspective (Keller, 2018), it is socially constructed by historically and spatially specific narratives. Comparing India and Germany, this paper demonstrates how shifting discourses shape who can claim space and what counts as a home. In pre-2000s India, the category “pavement dweller” recognized dwelling and livelihood in public space, legitimizing street-based home-making. The later adoption of a Western homelessness concept shifted attention to institutional shelters, undermining informal subsistence and displacing street settlements. In Germany, initiatives like Cuvry and Teepeeland in Berlin seek to reconceive public space as home. The Western homelessness discourse, while enabling state intervention, delegitimizes alternative dwelling modes and reinforces exclusion. Expanding the discourse beyond institutional frameworks is necessary to acknowledge diverse homelessness experiences and to validate street-based home-making as a legitimate form of existence.

http://doi.org/10.54825/FVEB7536

Marco Heinrich is a research associate at the University of Applied Sciences Augsburg. His research interests include homelessness, discourse analysis and subjectification, as well as qualitative methods. He is currently writing his PhD thesis on the discourse surrounding homelessness and the subjects it interpellates.

Khushboo Jain is an activist scholar based in Germany. Her ethnographic research on home-making practices on the streets of Delhi interrogates normative ideas of home, family, and the public–private divide, informing her teaching on feminist theory, Indian society, and reimagining the home. Her work seeks to decolonise academia, challenge stereotypes, and foster spaces of care and solidarity.

Niko Rollmann is a historian, writer and activist. Since 2007, he has been responsible for the educational program of Berlin’s “Robert-Tillmanns-Haus” facility. His research focuses on homelessness, informal settlements and underground movements.

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