The blood of the streets: agency and normativity in political mobiliza-tion of homeless people.

Abstract

From my ethnographic experiences at spaces for claiming rights, heldby the Homeless Political Movement, I discuss in this paper the construction ofdiacritical elements mobilized in the homeless process of insertion at politicalstruggles and state dialogue spaces. In this complex scenario, I seek to highlighttheagencyof these people in their relationships with the relevant frameworks ofpolitical mobilization, focusing on both their battles against the State officersand on the way they actively inhabit the normativity of the Modern State orga-nizational logic. I specifically highlight the dynamics in which the militants clas-sify different agents of dialogue, by manipulating narratives involving the “streetexperiences”. I argue that the militants either turn these experiences positive orshow their perverse dimension, having in mind the agents and the intentions atstake.