Making‐Home From Below: Domesticating Footpath and Resisting "Homelessness" in Mumbai. Issue 1 (12th October 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Banerjee, Paroj
• Is Part Of: Antipode. Volume 55:Issue 1(2023)
• Page Start: 5
• Page End: 26
• Publication Date: 2022-10-12
• Subjects: home -- homelessness -- public domesticities -- street life -- Mumbai; Geography -- Periodicals; 910.5
• DOI: 10.1111/anti.12889
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0066-4812

Abstract

Abstract: Drawing upon ethnography among footpath dwellers in Mumbai this paper argues that hegemonic ideas and practices of urban inhabitation constrain subaltern visions of home as well as public space. In doing so, it warrants an ontology of urban inhabitation that transcends occupancy politics. It is not just the neoliberal state and property‐entrenching capital but also the politics of inclusion that fragments subaltern subjectivities of belonging and dispossession. By highlighting everyday practices, particularly the use of footwear, food preparation and consumption, performance of modesty, and rearing of pets, I articulate two ways in which home is experienced and homelessness is resisted through claims where interlocutors have no spatial legitimacy: by (re)producing spatial and moral boundaries and practising multiple mobilities that enable transient domesticities. This paper thus provides an expanded sense of home that moves beyond the materialities of home making, and binaries of the "private" interior and "public" exterior.