Paper short abstract:

This paper addresses the affective geographies of people in street homelessness in the city of Zagreb, and the interrelations between homeless individuals emotional experiences and their use of places and trajectories/mobilities trough the city.

Paper long abstract:

Research has addressed the socio-spatial exclusion of homeless people from public spaces in European cities and showed how the increased control of public spaces, including increased policing and regulation/criminalization, is often used to manage people in homelessness and restrict their movement through the city (Doherty et al., 2008). Despite this, the lives of homeless people are often characterized by high levels of mobility and they often tactically

use space and move through the city to negotiate different containments (Jackson, 2012). Recently, the authors gave attention to the interplay between emotional dynamics and place while understanding the experiences of homelessness and exclusion (Cloke et al., 2008; Fahnøe, 2018). This paper builds on this work and addresses the affective geographies of people in street homelessness in the city of Zagreb, and the interrelations between homeless individuals

emotional experiences and their use of places and trajectories/mobilities trough the city. By focusing on the emotional experiences of places this paper aims to shed a different light on the practices and mobilities of homeless people, which can contribute to more nuanced understandings of the processes of socio-spatial exclusion in the city and help to create more adequate interventions.

It is based on qualitative materials gathered from the CSRP project Exploring Homelessness and Pathways to Social Inclusion: A Comparative Study of Contexts and Challenges in Swiss and Croatian Cities (No. IZHRZO_180631/1), and it draws on ethnographic fieldwork, in depth and walk-along interviews conducted with people who have been experiencing street homelessness in Zagreb.