Metaphors and Evidence. Producing Numbers in National Homelessness Counts

ABSTRACT

It has been a couple of decades since attempts have been made to measure the extent of homelessness at national levels in Europe. While these counts are essential for public policymaking, producing such statistics also (re)produces power-knowledge. The definitions and categories used in homelessness surveys indicate how it is understood as a social problem. In Europe, the Nordic countries have some of the most reliable and current figures on homelessness. On the other hand, the Polish national homelessness count is highly criticized. This study compared the definitions, methodologies, and formats used in homelessness surveys from Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Poland. This investigation involved analyses of the way counts were organized, the categories used, and the creation of reports based on homelessness data. This enabled a deconstruction of how welfare states have used these numbers as metaphors and evidence to frame homelessness as a manageable phenomenon.

KEYWORDS:

• Homelessness
• metaphor
• power-knowledge
• Nordic countries
• Poland

Acknowledgments

The author is especially obliged to Evelyn Dyb and Lars Benjaminsen for answering in detail on many occasions on their work on the respective Norwegian and Danish surveys.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. In this article, I interchangeably use the terms Nordic and Scandinavian to refer to Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. However, I am aware of the cultural and geographical controversies surrounding both terms. Finland was not a part of this study because of significant cultural differences and because Finnish homelessness surveys use a different methodology in which data collection varies between municipalities and different categories of homelessness are distinguished (ARA 2018). Iceland was not included either, because it is a very small country with a homeless population of approximately 760 as of 2011 (360 were counted in Reykjavik in 2017); this information was also collected over a three-month period (Velferðarsvið Reykjavíkurborgar 2017).

Additional information

Funding

Part of this work has been possible thanks to the Swedish Institute Visby Scholarship [SI 0133/2014] titled: „Local and regional cooperation in cases of homelessness. An example of Polish and Estonian migrants in Stockholm” at Avdelningen för forskning om det civila samhället, Ersta Sköndal Högskola in Stockholm in 2015, a study visit funded by Norway Grants [FSS/2016/SV/W/0063] titled: “Women, welfare state and homelessness” in NIBR, Høgskolen i Oslo og Akershus w Oslo in 2016, and the research financed by the Polish National Science Centre [project no. 2015/17/B/HS6/04191].