Warm solidarity in the Belgian homelessness policy assemblage during the coronavirus pandemic

Abstract

In 2020 in Belgium the coronavirus crisis generated a widespread solidarity between the housed and the homeless. This paper adopts a policy assemblage approach to investigate policy responses to the pandemic with regards to actions, discourses and spatial materialities around homelessness. Three areas of contingent reassembling emerged from the analysis: spaces of cooperation, domestic space and public space. All three were permeated with new charity power relations and warm solidarity rhetoric. Firstly, emergency responses involved a high level of cooperation between different actors. Secondly, domestic space became a space for participation for helpers, while recipients – temporarily and as an exceptional measure – were granted access to it. Thirdly, daily practices in public space revealed and exacerbated power imbalances. Additionally, homelessness was portrayed in the media as caused by these exceptional circumstances rather than a problem of structural inequalities and insufficient policies. In this rhetoric, increased civic solidarity was the answer to the extraordinary situation. Despite all their drawbacks, in the context of the multilevel Belgian administrative structure, however, these contingent initiatives are potentially also a tool of critique and policy change