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Paper short abstract

Drawing on ethnographic research and a material perspective, I examine the everyday practice of a volunteer-run van that offers emergency support to homeless people during winter nights in a German city, asking how it negotiates a responsibility to provide shelter in a retreating welfare state.

Paper long abstract

In winter, conditions for homeless people become life-threatening, especially when sleeping outside. Emergency shelters become overcrowded, or people avoid them because of exclusionary rules, or experiences of violence or mistreatment. To counter this, grassroots initiatives step in to care for those affected. One such initiative is a volunteer-run van that conducts outreach tours every winter night in a large German city, driving people to shelters or providing material assistance.

Drawing on observations and stories from extensive ethnographic participation in these tours, I look at the van as a case study of grassroots homeless emergency support that provides welfare from below. I do so through a material perspective that takes both the van’s and its clients’ everyday practices seriously, as they navigate the practical and often cyclical effects of social, economic and migration policies that both marginalise and (increasingly) refuse to care. As the van’s assistance is not based on welfare principles but the ambivalent logic of humanitarianism, volunteers navigate limited resources and the constant need to make difficult choices to secure physical survival above all else.

Furthermore, I show how every night, volunteers engage in complex negotiations over responsibility with state and medical authorities. They have to strike a delicate balance between compliance and subversion to retain an already compromised agency to help their clients. With this case study, I seek to illuminate the realities of providing emergency support and social protection at, and beyond, the margins of a withdrawing welfare state.