Year: 2023
Type: dissertation
Abstract: This thesis addresses a research problem exploring how homeless people seem to move between states of being made to be, and making themselves, visible and invisible in and around Termini railway station in Rome.This is set to the backdrop of exclusionary urbanism in the Italian capital.The thesis makes a number of contributions.It advances the notion of in/visibility, a conjoined term exploring simultaneous modes of being seen and unseen.It also advances the concept of micro-visual encounters, by focusing on fleeting moments of everyday life in a railway station.The data results from a novel suite of mixed-methods: ethnographic fieldnotes from Termini station, the online film archive of TerminiTV and the street newspaper Shaker, written by homeless people in Rome and people who work with them.These methods aim to capture the complex and multi-dimensional nature of a place like Termini station whilst foregrounding the lived experiences of homeless people, many of whom are migrants.The relationship between visibility and invisibility in and around Termini is found to be complex.Homeless people are observed to be ignored when in plain sight, yet they are also rendered hypervisible due to their everyday behaviour that is deemed to be 'against' the norms of the city.Despite this, homeless people are able to address their own visibility through the films of TerminiTV and writing in Shaker.The thesis finds that as a result of micro-visual encounters, external processes like 'il decoro urbano', as well as their own actions and choice, homeless people in Termini may be subjected to a state of perpetual yet ambivalent in/visibility.While Rome is a unique case, this research addresses important issues experienced by some of the most marginalised people living in European cities and has wide-ranging dissemination and impact possibilities.My first thanks go to my ever-supportive supervisors, Richard Phillips and Ryan Powell.Secondly, thanks to the White Rose College of Arts & Humanities whose financial and institutional support has been an anchorparticularly through Covid-times.Thirdly, grazie mille to all those in Rome who have helped me along the way, including Isabella Clough Marinaro, John Cabot University and the British School at Rome.I
Author: Haynes, William
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7006569508