Become “Homeless”. Policies and Practices of Welfare at the Lens of Ethnography

Abstract

Within the framework of anthropology of welfare that takes into account representations of homelessness in different European contexts, the observation of welfare practices in Italy and in Turin makes it possible to reconstruct how much and how neoliberal policies have affected the social protection system and what is its impact on the users of the services. In particular, through the experiences of some homeless people, it emerges how the “rhetoric of activation” reduces the possibility of self-determination.
When users move away from expected assistance paths, they incur sanctions that have very strong repercussions on their lives and become a real structural violence.