THE COERCIVE CITY : Homelessness and the Politics of Invisibilization

In recent years, the ambivalence of care in the management of homelessness has fueled many debates, leading scholars to move beyond the narratives of the revanchist and post‐revanchist city to explore the evolving management of poverty in public spaces and the ways in which punishment and assistance have become intertwined. In this article, I aim to contribute to these reflections through the lens of power. Engaging with neo‐Gramscian debates on power, I emphasize the role of coercion in the management of homelessness, particularly in relation to the production of consent. Adopting a Gramscian framework enables us to view coercion from a broader perspective, conceiving coercive mechanisms as extending far beyond the punitive and violent practices that regulate homelessness in public spaces. Understanding coercion as a means of obtaining the consent of homeless individuals to comply with the solutions offered by public authorities leads us to include laws, rules, ordinances, outreach work and even certain infrastructures of care within the concept of coercion. Invisibilization in the coercive city is thus the result of homeless individuals consenting to move off the streets, whether incentivized or forced.