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.