All in the Same Boat? - Displacement, difference and urban homelessness

Department of Sociology seminar

This paper considers how forms of difference are negotiated in a day centre for young homeless people, characterised by extreme diversity, in central London. Approaching the day centre as place of the displaced the paper foregrounds the ways in which processes of local and global exile shape contemporary spaces of homelessness. The paper asks what kinds of alliances and conflicts occur in these encounters between displaced young people and what is revealed in these encounters about homelessness and the wider city.

The paper reflects on the oft-repeated analogy that young homeless people are all 'in the same boat' asking: What is 'the same boat' and when does the analogy start to unravel? Arguing that existing approaches do not capture the complexity of youth homelessness in the multicultural city, the paper argues that theorising homelessness demands making connections on a global scale, and indeed to forms of management of movement between scales.

Suggesting that being 'in the same boat' stems from an implication in a set of difficult circumstances - homelessness and poverty - but speaks little of pasts, I will argue that thinking through the limits of the analogy reveals the different forms of movement, exile and violence that bring people to the homeless centre. The paper considers how difference is spoken, arguing that while the language of multiculture can be a useful resource deployed to
limit moments of potential conflict, there is a disjuncture between the violence and loss of these young people's stories and the language of diversity.