Governing “The Homeless” in English Homelessness Legislation: Foucauldian Governmentality and the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017

ABSTRACT

This article contributes to the growing body of work exploring governmentality theory in housing and homelessness law by engaging, for the first time, a Foucauldian neoliberal, governmentality and risk framework to the recently enacted Homelessness Reduction Act 2017. This article locates the place of governmental activity to be scrutinized as the homeless population and contends that the Homelessness Reduction 2017 (‘HRA 17ʹ) can be interpreted as operating according to three intersecting modes of problematization of the homeless: (1) biopolitical problematization; (2) governmental problematization; and (3) ethical problematization. In so doing, this article reveals that the 2017 Act reflects a shift in neoliberal thinking on homelessness in constructing images of the homeless as a “risk population”, as subjectified, autonomized individuals exhorted to self-work and ethical self-fashioning as responsibilized citizens taking account of their own housing precarity.

KEYWORDS:

• Foucault
• government
• homelessness
• responsibilization
• risk

Acknowledgments

I am most grateful for the advice and guidance of leading governmentality scholars from around the world for their helpful comments on earlier drafts which have greatly enhanced the work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. On Foucault’s concept of governmentality, see Foucault, M. “Governmentality” in Burchell, G., Gordon, C., and Miller, P. The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, (1991) Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf; M. Dean, Governmentality: Power and Rule in Modern Society (1999) London: SAGE; T. Lemke, “Foucault, Governmentality, and Critique” (2002) 14(2) Rethinking Marxism, 49.

2. In criminology, see: Garland, D. “Governmentality and the Problem of Crime: Foucault, Criminology, Sociology”, (1997) Theoretical Criminology 1(2), 173; Stenson, K. “Sovereignty, Biopolitics and the Local Government of Crime in Britain”, (2005) 9 Theoretical Criminology, 265; Stenson, K. “Beyond Kantianism – Response to Critiques”, (2008) 6(1) Social Work and Society [online], 42. In pedagogy, see: Ball, S. Foucault and Education: Disciplines and Knowledge (1990) London: Routledge; Morgan, A. “Governmentality versus Choice in Contemporary Special Education”, (2005) 25(3) Critical Social Policy, 325. In social welfare, see: Baistow, K. “Liberation and Regulation? Some Paradoxes of Empowerment”, (1994/5) 14(2) Critical Social Policy, 34; Cruikshank, B. (1994) “The Will to Empower: Technologies of Citizenship and the War on Poverty”, (1994) 23(4) Socialist Review, 29; Cruikshank, B. The Will to Empower: Democratic Citizens and other Subjects (1999) Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press; Marston, G., McDonald, C. Analysing Social Policy: A Governmental Approach (2006) Cheltenham: Edward Elgar; Lewis, G. (2000), Race, Gender, Social Welfare: Encounters in Postcolonial Society. Cambridge: Polity Press. In medicine, see: Alaszewski, A. “Drugs, risk and society: Government, governance or governmentality?” (2011) 13(5) Health, Risk & Society 13(5), 389; Petersen, A., Bunton, R. Foucault, Health and Medicine (2002) London: Routledge; and in education, see: Peters, M., Besley, A., Olssen, M. Governmentality Studies in Education (Contexts of Education) (2009) Rotterdam: Sense Publishers; Fimyar, O. “Using Governmentality as a Conceptual Tool in Education Policy Research,” (2008) Educate, The Journal of Doctoral Research in Education Special Edition March (2008), 3; Besley, T. “Governmentality of Youth: managing risky subject” (2010) Policy Futures in Education 8(5).

3. On North American engagement of governmentality, see, for example, Kingfisher C. (2007), “Discursive constructions of homelessness in a small city in the Canadian prairies: Notes on destructuration, individualization, and the production of (raced and gendered) unmarked categories” 34(1) American Ethnologist, 91; Evans, J. (2012) “Supportive measures, enabling restraint: governing homeless ‘street drinkers’ in Hamilton, Canada” 13(2) Social & Cultural Geography, 185.

4. The Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 was based on the recommendations of a review conducted by an independent panel of experts, convened by Crisis in 2015 which proposed alternative legislation based on that introduced by the Housing (Wales) Act 2014.

5. For a helpful summary of the differing accounts and definitional variants of neoliberalism examined in housing literature, see Hodkinson, S. “Housing regeneration and the private finance initiative in England: Unstitching the neoliberal urban straitjacket,” (2011) 43(2) Antipode, 43(2); on contemporary accounts of neoliberalism and housing, see generally, Glynn, S. (2009) Introduction, in: Glynn, S. (Ed), Where the Other Half Lives, pp. 1–8 (London: Pluto Press); Madden, D., Marcuse, P. (2016) In Defence of Housing (London: Verso); Slater, T. (2012) The myth of broken Britain: Welfare reform and the production of ignorance, Antipode, 46(4), 948–969.

6. On technologies of control and care, see, among many others, Conradson D. (2003), “Geographies of Care: Spaces, Practices, Experiences” Social & Cultural Geography 4(4), 451–54; Johnsen S., Fitzpatrick S. (2010) “Revanchist Sanitisation or Coercive Care? The Use of Enforcement to Combat Begging, Street Drinking and Rough Sleeping in England.” Urban Studies 47 (8): 1703–23; DeVerteuil, G. Wilton R. (2009) “Spaces of Abeyance, Care and Survival: The Addiction Treatment System as a Site of ‘Regulatory Richness.’” Political Geography 28 (8): 463–72; G. DeVerteuil (2014), “Does the Punitive Need the Supportive? A Sympathetic Critique of Current Grammars of Urban Injustice.” Antipode 46 (4): 874–93; Hennigan B., J. Speer J. (2018) “Compassionate Revanchism: The Blurry Geography of Homelessness in the USA.” Urban Studies, April.

7. On the concept of self-work, see Baistow K. and Cruikshank B. who have drawn attention to how empowerment of targeted populations is increasingly engaged as a tool of self-government, responsibilization and self-improvement: Baistow, K. “Liberation and Regulation? Some Paradoxes of Empowerment”, (1994/5) Critical Social Policy 14 (2), 34; Cruikshank, B. (1994) “The Will to Empower: Technologies of Citizenship and the War on Poverty”, (1994) 23(4) Socialist Review, 29; Cruikshank, B. The Will to Empower: Democratic Citizens and other Subjects (1999) Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.