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Paper short abstract:

In this talk, I will sketch protests against the dire conditions in a homeless shelter in Munich. I will argue that the shelter can be analyzed as space of solidarity and resistance but also -- and at the same time -- as tool for disciplining, precarizing and locking away the racialized poor.

Paper long abstract:

In 2013, the German city of Munich opened a winter shelter for those houseless people who ostensibly did not have access to the city’s regular homeless shelters due to a lack of social rights on federal level. Since then, many EU citizens without formal employment contract have taken shelter in this substandard facility. As so-called “inactive” intra-EU migrants, they were excluded from social benefits as an attempt to control their mobility and to divide spaces of wage labour and social reproduction.

As movement-based ethnographic researcher, I participated in protests led by people experiencing homelessness against the dire conditions in that shelter since its opening. The protests achieved small improvements. First only open during winter nights when temperatures fell below freezing, houseless people can sleep there the whole year round now. At the beginning of the pandemic, people using the shelter staged another protest. They demanded better hygienic conditions, among other things. During a preparation meeting for a rallye, a Venezuelan and a Bulgarian citizen met and decided to write a sign in their common language Italian: “Vogliamo la liberte per nato liberis” – “We want freedom, because we were born free”.

In this talk, I will argue that the homeless shelter is paradigmatic for current liminal spaces at the junction of migration and social policy characterized by differential inclusion. It can be analyzed as space of solidarity and resistance but also and at the same time as tool for disciplining, precarizing and locking away the racialized poor.