The hopeful labour of begging - Homeless people's struggles for a better life in Paris

Bibliographic Data

ID4475736
AuthorsJ Lenhard (0000-0003-2532-3415, University of Cambridge, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume39
Issue5
Pages792-809
Publication date2021-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEnvironment and Planning D Society and Space (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0263-7758 • E-ISSN: 1472-3433
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/02637758211005443
OpenAlexW3155509351
LanguageEN
Citations received13
References cited47

Both in public imagination and scholarship, begging is often associated with passivity, waiting, inactivity and as such defined as the opposite of 'real work'. During two years of fieldwork with people sleeping rough in Paris, I observed my informants to the contrary describe begging as their occupation. In this paper, I present an ethnographically grounded argument that the people experiencing homelessness I accompanied over the course of two years experienced begging as labour which involved constructing and supporting emotional narratives of neediness, deservingness and personal connections in scripts, stories and hustles. My interlocutors often understood this labour to be a hopeful one, one that structured their day (and thoughts) but also one that enabled their projets de vies, their struggles into the future. In the wake of overwhelming suffering and structural violence, I observed begging not only a short-term fix for consumption but also as keeping the future open - the more long-term future of eventually leaving the street behind

Begging · Criminology · Narrative · Political science · Scholarship · Social science · Sociology · Gender Studies · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Homelessness and Social Issues · Law · Sex work and related issues

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