Swept Up Lives?

Swept Up Lives? challenges conventional accounts of urban homelessness. Moving beyond more familiar narratives concerning the recent 'purification' of public space and attempts to sweep homeless people from the streets, it focuses instead upon the many and complex attempts to care for homeless people in the contemporary city. Drawing upon in-depth ethnographic research with organisations providing homeless night shelters, hostels, day centres, and soup runs - and with the users of these services - the authors emphasize the relationships of care embodied and performed within homeless service spaces. Positioning these attempts to care for homeless people within a broader rapprochement between secular and faith-based ethical motivations, it draws attention to the emergence of a post-secular ethics that runs counter to, and sometimes actively resists, the vicissitudes of neoliberal welfare restructuring and a 'revanchist' (or vengeful) urban politics. The book thus argues for a more nuanced understanding of the ways in which homelessness is governed, paving the way for a characterisation of homelessness that pays greater attention to the agency of homeless people themselves and the complexity of homeless geographies - geographies within which homeless people experience a range of relationships that include compassion and care as well as regulation, containment and control. Swept Up Lives? Re-envisioning the Homeless City offers innovative research and a visionary new approach to shape our understanding of the complexities of urban homelessness.