Negotiating labels and care: how stakeholders selectively adapt homeless services in Taiwan’s welfare regime

Homelessness in Taiwan is legally framed through the designation of “wanderers” (遊民, yóumín), which emphasises vagrancy and family responsibility rather than housing insecurity. This paper examines how stakeholders – including service workers and managers – negotiate between the Western-dervied term “homeless individuals” (無家者) and the entrenched local label wanderers, and how they reflect on the potential adoption of the Housing First (HF) model. Drawing on a qualitative case study comprising 54 interviews and participant observation, the study shows that stakeholders strategically alternate between homeless individuals to advocate for housing-based interventions, and wanderers to align with family-first welfare logics rooted in Confucian ethics. While Taiwanese stakeholders broadly support HF for its emphasis on immediate housing and integrated support, they identify barriers including a limited supply of social housing, landlord discrimination, and persistent family-based welfare obligations. The findings demonstrate how terminology both challenges and reproduces stigma, and how Western practices are selectively adapted within East Asian regimes shaped by variegated neoliberalisation and Confucian ethics. By situating homelessness within debates on citizenship, the paper highlights how stakeholders mediate global policy flows and local welfare practices, reframing care and belonging in ways that complicate the institutionalisation of HF in Taiwan.