Assemblages of care and the analysis of public policies on homelessness in Turin, Italy

Abstract

This paper investigates the ways urban policies on homelessness are discursively framed and practically enacted in Turin, Italy. The notion of ‘assemblages of care’ is introduced to show how these policies contribute to the constitution of different experiences of homelessness, by means of their discursive blueprints and practical enactments. Relying on 10 months of ethnographic fieldwork, the paper questions four policies. Three of these interventions are found to have negative impacts on homeless people's emotions and ways of life; the remaining policy, I argue, holds the potential to produce alternative assemblages and more positive engagement with the individuals encountered. The conclusion provides more general critical reflections on urban policy and homelessness.

Key words:

• assemblages of care
• power
• homeless people
• homelessness policies
• urban ethnography
• Turin

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank the participants to the research, as well as Ash Amin, Francesca Governa and the DIST of Turin, Stewart Clegg, Geoff DeVerteuil and Leo for their support. Thanks also to Jonathan Darling, City's Editorial Board and the two anonymous reviewers for the comments provided (the usual disclaimers apply). This paper is dedicated to Amos, Pancri, Paolo and Cardù.

Notes

1 ‘Spike’ is the jargon used by Orwell to indicate a homeless shelter.

2 Note that these perspectives—the refusal of grand narrative and the explorative engagement with urban processes, which include also an attention to non-human agencies—represent two of the three tenets characterising critical assemblage thinking according to McFarlane (2011a).

3 The distinction between ‘expression’ and ‘content’ is only analytical. In the process of assemblage they are articulated on the horizontal axis, with no prominence or causality of one toward the other, and on the vertical one—entangling in territorialisation and disentangling in de-territorialisation (Deleuze and Guattari 1987; Dewsbury 2011).

4 A third possible case is of someone with a formal administrative residence in Turin (although obviously deprived of a physical accommodation). In this case the person is not managed by the SAD but by the general Social Services of the city.

5 The names of the homeless people reported in the text have been modified to protect their privacy.

6 I played my part, in the Turin context, by ‘translating’ my research in a non-academic form: that of a novel. The book, called Il numero 1 (from ‘Via della Casa Comunale, 1’; Lancione 2011b), was initially planned to be an auto-produced book to be distributed among the participants in the research. However, it was eventually published and reached a wider audience. Il numero 1 features also 21 original illustrations done by a young Italian artist (Eleonora Mignoli) and a ‘technical’ appendix, which summarises the research findings and outlines possible changes in policymaking. The latter was read and well received by members of the City of Turin, and was then turned into an e-book freely available online: ‘I finally read [ … ] “Il numero 1”. It is truly impressive how the book manages to captures the reality of the services offered by the City of Turin, and of homeless people, at least according to my experience. I hope to be able to use the Appendix in the reflections I will propose to my colleagues, both in City and in the cooperatives’ (M.D., SAD operator, responsible for projects enacted in the ‘via Sacchi’ centre. Email, May 2012).

Additional information

Michele Lancione is an Urban Studies Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, UK.