Investigating Homelessness: In Defence of a Declared and Concerned Ontological Politics

Quantification and pathological individualization are the two dominant trends within homelessness research. In acquiring near-exclusive status in this research, they constitute a regime of truth and produce a series of unsustainable negations: they deny that they produce the realities which they study, they deny that other realities may be produced, they delegitimise any alternative methodological positionings, and render power relationships and domination invisible, thus obscuring the injustice of life on the streets. As an alternative to this regime of truth, this article argues for the mobilisation of a declared ontological politics that is concerned with the welfare and dignity of homeless people