Situating the (il)licit in post-austerity Britain: homelessness and the logics of the market economy. (Working title)

The proposed project seeks to investigate how homeless people
become excluded in cities through changes to what activities are
permitted in the urban built environment and public spaces. It focuses
on the period of austerity and dispossession of resources used by
homeless people in London since 2010.
Using the concept of the illicit, the project seeks to interrogate how
the law and cultural narratives regulate what everyday practices are
acceptable in cities, particularly where market led economic changes
have excluded homeless people in the absence of alternative
provision under neoliberalism (specifically through cuts to state
welfare initiatives and increased involvement of private actors). In
other words, why is it that squatting and rough sleeping are
criminalised or condemned in some places when empty home
ownership is not?
The project seeks to use Karl Polanyi's notion of how the market
economy prioritises profit over other uses. Using Polanyi's insights
into socioeconomic life and practices, the project aims to understand
how illicitness emerges in relation to the introduction of laws
designed to support the fundamental processes and principles (i.e.,
logics) of the market system. The project thus aims to extend
research in economic geography towards investigating the
institutions (or 'rules') that enable capitalism to operate, reorienting
analyses of marginalisation to societies towards cases in the Global
North.