Abstract
This article orbits two mandated mobilities: moving on and finding shelter – one continual and one oriented toward confinement. Reporting ethnographic fieldwork and archival research in Denver, a city that recently outlawed camping in all open space, this article builds a model of spatial confinement. The article argues that, in concert with other quality of life laws, poverty management sequesters Denver’s poor in what the authors term a spatiotemporal camp, a fluid zone produced by delimiting self-reliance and truncating the ability of individuals to relate to social and physical environments. Incorporating both Agamben’s notion of homo sacer and his conceptualization of the camp with other concepts of the camp derived from theories of abnormality, the authors argue that in effect poverty management measures in Denver simultaneously disperse, concentrate, and conceal its homeless citizens. Because it deprives the undomiciled of the autonomy necessary to conjure home-like spaces, poverty management may exacerbate homelessness.
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