All talk and no movement? Homeless coping and resistance to urban planning

Abstract

Privileging the discursive expression of micro-resistance while exploiting spatial metaphors such as cynical distancing and escape, recent work in Critical Management Studies (CMS) has tended to find resistance everywhere without actually examining its spatial whereabouts. Utilizing a spatial approach, this article therefore investigates how homeless people in Stockholm not only resisted but also coped otherwise with two urban planning projects that intended to drive them away from two public places. Whereas some of the homeless subverted the planners’ intentions by returning, others confirmed their intentions by leaving. The article further discusses the nomadic nature of these movements and how they were related to homeless discourses of apathy, cynicism and contentment. Finally, it discusses what implications this may have for homeless people and urban planning organizations, and for the understanding of resistance in CMS.

During the past couple of decades Critical Management Studies (CMS) has generated a considerable literature on resistance, particularly with a post-structuralist or Foucauldian bent. While Foucauldian scholarship was attacked 15 years ago for focusing on panoptic forms of power so much that it ignored resistance (see Thompson and Ackroyd, 1995), more recent commentaries have warned it of finding resistance virtually everywhere (Fleming and Spicer, 2008), ‘in every nook and cranny of organizational life’ (Mumby, 2005: 21), in any act or micro-practice of discretion, cynicism, escape, apparent consent, impression management or making do (see e.g. Fleming and Spicer, 2003; Knights and McCabe, 2000; Thomas and Davies, 2005a).

Given Foucault’s (1979: 95) by now sloganized statement that ‘where there is power, there is resistance’ perhaps this should be no surprise. Perhaps it was always only a matter of time before an exponentially growing crowd of post-structuralists and Foucauldians would replace the focus on disciplinary control with an emphasis on informal, non-intentional and non-oppositional micro-practices of everyday resistance and misbehaviour. Arguably, this has produced important insights into discursive practices of identity-work whereby people challenge and subvert managerial and organizational goals and structures in often unexpected ways (e.g. Alvesson and Willmott, 2002; Kondo, 1990; Meriläinen et al., 2004; Thomas and Davies, 2005b). At the same time, sceptics have warned that a bias towards micro-practices of resistance risks fetishizing and trivializing resistance that it: (i) risks exaggerating the effects that such practices might have on the people who engage in them and on the conditions under which they work and live; and (ii) risks diverting attention away from more explicit, organized and oppositional forms of resistance that may be more significant in changing such conditions (e.g. Fleming and Spicer, 2008; Mumby, 2005).

Often arguing for a return to issues of collective action, voiced dissent and the economic-material aspects of resistance, these commentaries assume a more narrow definition of resistance that may avoid exaggerating its prevalence and power (see e.g. Fleming and Spicer, 2007; Spicer and Böhm, 2007). However, they do not challenge the pre-occupation with discourse and metaphor which has enabled much post-structuralist and Foucauldian scholarship to find resistance everywhere. Whereas post-structuralist and Foucauldian scholarship abounds in spatial metaphors of cynical defence, distancing and escape (Fleming, 2005), studies of collective action, voiced dissent and the economic-material aspects of resistance thrive on spatial metaphors of movement and mobilization. And whereas the former focuses on the expression of disbelief, oppositional identities and alternative subjectivities in workplace subcultures and the latter emphasizes the explicit demands and disagreements expressed in industrial action, they both tend to ignore the spatial practices involved—whether in absenteeism, feet-dragging or the guarding of picket lines. Hence, both literatures divert attention away from the sense in which these and other forms of resistance may involve a more material sense of spatial occupation and movement—for instance, how unionized employees may resist unfair wages and unsafe working conditions by blocking factory and office building entrances, or how business consultants may resist work intensification by taking time-consuming detours between client meetings to take care of personal business rather than commit to company policy by seeking the most time-efficient routes .

In contrast, a spatial approach to resistance makes it possible to more directly investigate the prevalence and whereabouts of resistance. This would involve examining whether resistance is present or absent in a particular space or place, how people do or do not resist by dwelling and moving within, across and between spaces and places, and how people resist or otherwise cope with spatial and architectural designs in particular spaces and places. This neither denies the significance of dominant discourses and truth regimes nor the role of discursive practices such as those involved in identity-work. Rather, a spatial approach insists that spatial practices and the particular relations between spatial and discursive practices deserve investigation in their own right. For instance, particular groups may attribute particular meanings to a particular place or seek to change the meanings typically associated with it by changing its spatial-material configuration. Further, spatial practices may be mobilized to advance the discursive expression of interests and identities; the discursive construction and re-articulation of identity may enable particular spatial practices; and spatial and discursive practices may contradict one another.

Drawing on a spatial approach to resistance while acknowledging the possible relations between spatial and discursive practices, I investigate how homeless people may cope with and resist urban planning through the case of two recent reconstruction projects in Stockholm. As the reconstructions intended to drive homeless people away from two public places (Odenplan and Fridhemsplan), I ask the following questions: (i) in what ways did homeless people resist the reconstruction projects?; (ii) in what other ways did homeless people cope with the reconstruction projects?; and (iii) how effective were their resistance practices?

As homelessness actualizes the politics of organization in an almost extreme way it may seem odd that it is rarely discussed in CMS. Homeless people are one of the most marginalized groups in organizational life, yet they constantly face constructs, practices and social problems that are produced by organizations. Homeless people typically struggle with joblessness, find themselves at odds with the social services and charity organizations that are meant to help them, and rarely participate in voluntary organizations to fight for their own interests. Lacking a private home, they craft a home in a public space initially designed by urban planning organizations. While the resistance practices of other marginalized groups have attracted some interest in recent years (e.g. Gossett and Kilker, 2006), investigating how homeless people cope with and resist what organizations try to do to them and to the spaces they inhabit may expand our insights into the power, limitations and spatial dynamics of organizational control and resistance, particularly at the margins of organizational life.

The case discussed in this article is therefore more concerned with how organizations and organizing practices are coped with and resisted than it is with organizations and organizing as such. The homeless people I studied did not resist and cope with urban planning in any formally organized way, and their resistance and coping practices implied a rather limited sense of informal coordination and organizing. These practices did however involve strenuous efforts that extend what is typically considered ‘work’ in CMS and in organization studies. It is also worth noting that from the outset the planners were eager to break up and dislocate the informally organized communities that the homeless nurtured at Odenplan and Fridhemsplan prior to the reconstructions.

Although homelessness has received limited attention in CMS, other social scientists have studied homeless coping and resistance from a number of angles. To investigate homeless coping and resistance to urban planning, I therefore draw on this research along with recent research on resistance in CMS, the literature on space in CMS and organization studies more broadly, and existing writings on nomadic movement. I then turn to the case of the two reconstruction projects in Stockholm. Whereas much previous research attributes an omni-present status to discursive micro-practices of resistance, this case offers more ambiguous findings about the prevalence and effectiveness of discursive and spatial forms of micro-resistance. Finally, I discuss what implications this has for homeless people and urban planning organizations and for the understanding of resistance in CMS.

Understanding coping and resistance

Homeless coping and resistance

The existing literature on homeless coping and resistance highlights the significance of both collective action and non-oppositional micro-practices. Social movement organizations acting on behalf of homeless people are seen to use tactics of exit, persistence, adaptation and voice in politicized events fighting the control and monitoring of homeless people in public space (Snow and Mulcahy, 2001). Further, homeless people and their supporters have been found to engage in militant activism and place-centred struggle to resist urban development and reconstruction projects, throwing rocks and bottles at the police and remaining visible by clinging to the space after the reconstruction (Mitchell, 1995).

However, homeless people are also seen to cope and resist in more subtle ways, through micro-practices of identity-work and place-making. According to Snow and Anderson (1993), homeless people may salvage the self through causal accounts explaining why and how they ended up homeless and through various forms of escapism, distancing and identity affirmation. Homeless people may affirm their homeless identity by embracing or exaggerating what it means to be homeless, or try to escape the harsh reality of homelessness through drugs, alcohol and fantasizing about alternative realities. They may further distance themselves from homeless identity by distancing themselves from caretaking organizations (institutional distancing), from homeless people as a group (categorical associational distancing), and from the role of being homeless (role distancing). They may also migrate to find subsistence at new places as they are squeezed out from their previous dwellings by the regeneration efforts of city officials (Duneier, 1999).

While Snow and Anderson (and Duneier) do not view these practices as resistance but as mere survival strategies, other contributors argue that homeless people resist—and distance themselves from homeless identity—by engaging in impression management. According to Ruddick (1996), homeless youth constructed both an individual and collective identity as punk youth rather than as homeless youth to avoid being kicked out of mainstream spaces such as public squares and shopping malls. Further, Wright (1997) argues that public restrooms provide a back stage which enables homeless people to maintain a ‘clean’ mainstream front and ‘keep up appearances’ when being front stage in public squares and shopping malls. By enabling homeless people to resist homeless identity and stay invisible as homeless—and socially deviant—these forms of identity-work enable homeless people to engage in spatial tactics and alternative forms of place-making.

Place-making involves making sense of, inhabiting and/or modifying the physical form and content of a particular place. In contrast to de Certeau’s (1984) notion of place as a stable position with a proper name, identity and order, place-making (or, if adopting de Certeau’s vocabulary, ‘space-making’, since he views space as ‘practiced place’) may be accomplished through spatial tactics. Spatial tactics are mobilized by marginal actors as they cunningly insinuate themselves into the strategies of the powerful, manipulating, making fleeting use of and moving in and out of places so as to temporarily fragment and subvert the strategies of city officials, business owners and other dominant actors.

The identity-work of the homeless in Ruddick’s and Wright’s studies enabled them to make alternative sense of and temporarily inhabit places where they were not wanted, thereby resisting the social control they otherwise would have been subjected to in these places. But, identity-work and micro-resistance was also enabled by spatial tactics of place-making: some of the same homeless people actually affirmed an individual and collective homeless identity and resisted social control by hiding in marginal spaces such as abandoned buildings, and they resisted social control by moving quickly between mainstream and marginal spaces. In summary, then, the homeless literature tends to either associate homeless resistance with collective action and activism, or with almost any micro-practice of impression management, place-making and spatial movement which makes homeless people invisible as homeless people.

Workplace micro-resistance and identity-work

Despite certain overlapping concepts, research on micro-resistance and identity-work in CMS operates with a more elaborate and somewhat different conceptual apparatus than the homeless research. Indeed, contemporary employees may be seen as identity-workers, continuously engaged in interpretive practices that reproduce or transform self-identity (Alvesson and Willmott, 2002), and there is an immense literature investigating how people consciously and unconsciously negotiate, affirm and reinterpret identity at work (e.g. Carroll and Levy, 2008; Collinson, 1992, 2003; Lutgen-Sandvik, 2008; Watson, 1994, 2008).

While identity-work is not reducible to resistance but also seen as a ‘medium and outcome of organizational control’ (Alvesson and Willmott, 2002: 622), many studies highlight how organizational attempts at identity regulation provoke cynicism, dissent and other forms of resistance amongst individuals. More specifically, previous research has studied how employees protect, enact, assert and reinforce their self-identity—by refusing, dis-identifying with and rearticulating dominant organizational discourse and ascribed identities through counter-discourse (e.g. Alvesson and Willmott, 2002; Down and Reveley, 2009; Holmer-Nadesan, 1996; Meriläinen et al., 2004), combining various organizational discourses (e.g. Whittington, 1989) and discursively positioning themselves as similar or different to others (e.g. Garcia and Hardy, 2007). This does not mean that identity-work merely involves conscious individual efforts to achieve a coherent and distinct identity (as e.g. Alvesson and Willmott 2002 argue; see also Alvesson, 2010)—much identity-work in organizations is contradictory, unconscious (e.g. Clarke et al., 2009; Thomas and Davies, 2005a) and informed by extra-individual discourses (Watson, 2008).

The CMS literature on identity-work shows how people in organizations openly or clandestinely assert, reinforce and change their established self-identities in contradiction to ascribed identities. However, particular attention has been given to how people affirm and craft alternative self-identities through relatively subtle acts of distancing and cynicism. In this research cynicism typically implies that people resist by dis-identifying with cultural prescriptions and dominant forms of subjectivity. ‘Employees are cynically enlightened about the realities of corporate exploitation, but they act as if they are not’ (Fleming and Spicer, 2003: 164, emphasis in original) by submitting to job requirements and overtly endorsing organizational roles, norms and values.

Three notions of cynicism emerge in this work, all of which actualize spatial metaphors (Fleming, 2005). Firstly, cynicism may constitute a defence mechanism to avoid cultural colonization as employees privately reject the official organizational culture but officially comply with it by keeping their rejection invisible to others. Secondly, cynicism may involve employees critically distancing themselves from cultural prescriptions in a more tactical way through anti-corporate humour and joking. Thirdly, cynicism may involve crafting an emancipatory space where employees can produce and escape into alternative subjectivities by creatively and ironically overdoing organizational roles, norms and values. The two former approaches presume that employees embody a subjectivity which is a priori to power, resistance and conflict and which is fundamentally different from the dominant subjectivity prescribed in the organizational environment. The latter approach suggests that alternative subjectivities emerge in conversation with dominant, prescribed subjectivities.

Although the emphasis on cynicism and other forms of micro-resistance has led much of this literature to see resistance virtually everywhere, it is also acknowledged that not all micro-resistance is effective. Workers may cynically distance themselves from corporate culture in order to retain an autonomous sense of working class identity, but end up cutting themselves off from processes of decision-making by doing so (Collinson, 1992). Alternatively, a powerful sense of working class identity enabled by cynical distancing may be undermined by workers who welcome management initiatives (Ezzamel et al., 2001). On the whole, however (perhaps with the exception of Collinson’s (1992, 1994) example of ‘physical distancing’ where male workers worked ‘flat out’ in the mornings to maximize their bonus before hiding in the toilets to play cards and read pornographic magazines), this literature privileges discursive rather than spatial practices of distancing, emphasizing how people resist by expressing views and identities that distance them from others.

The micro-politics of organizational space

The literature on organizational space, architecture and design in CMS and organization studies provides a more systematic understanding of the micro-politics of space and how spatial and architectural designs may affect and be enacted by people in organizations. Causal links have been identified between office design and interaction frequency, job performance (Sundstrom et al., 1980), communication (Fayard and Weeks, 2007; Hatch, 1987; Zalesny and Farace, 1987), service mindedness and creativity (Berg and Kreiner, 1990). Further, more critical research has shown how space is subjected to the power of organizations (Dale and Burrell, 2008), arguing that ‘buildings are all about control’ (Baldry et al., 1998: 164) and that office landscaping organizes bodies in space and ‘shapes action and interaction’ in ways that produce labour control (Hofbauer, 2000: 167–68).

At the same time, both critical and mainstream research in this area has challenged spatial determinism. Although organizational architecture and design may ‘shape and morphologize what can take place successfully within a massed framework’, it is not seen to ‘determine social relationships’ (Burrell and Dale, 2003: 185–86). And while architecture has power and control over people, this is not seen as the outcome of static causal links but as a matter of ‘the more fluid mutual interaction of changing material and social relations’ between architecture and people (Dale, 2005: 664). For instance, corporate ‘movers and shakers’ may use sign language to communicate across distances in open space office landscapes (Dale and Burrell, 2008), and office workers may display personal belongings to affirm a distinct self-identity that is under threat in non-territorial workspaces such as ‘hoteling’ and ‘hot-desking’ (Elsbach, 2003).

This literature, then, has made important contributions to the understanding of how people are affected by and enact organizational space, design and architecture. And while the construction of alternative spaces and the expression of spatial forms of resistance through sabotage, protest and squatting has been acknowledged in parts of this literature (see Dale and Burrell, 2008), the expression of resistance in spatial settings of organization remains under-theorized and under-explored empirically. To elaborate the understanding of spatial movement and spatial practices of coping and resistance I will now turn to the notion of nomadic movement.

Nomadic movement

Despite previous references to nomadic movement as a spatial metaphor for micro-resistance and alternative identity-work (e.g. Braidotti, 1994; Mumby, 2004), it is primarily a spatial practice. Drawing on Toynbee’s (1946) historical studies of nomad populations, Deleuze and Guattari argue that a defining feature of nomads is that they ‘do not move. They are nomads by dint of not moving, not migrating, of holding a smooth space that they refuse to leave’ (1988: 482, emphasis in original). A smooth space is a space that is not striated or limited, but open and dynamic, both territorially and in terms of the habits it affords. Whereas the steppe, the prairie and the ocean are typical examples of smooth space and the urban grid is a typical example of striated space, initially striated spaces such as urban grid cityscapes may indeed be enacted by certain nomads as if they were smooth spaces. Nomads may ‘smoothen out’, move across and inhabit initially striated spaces by seeking out habitable safe havens and reservoirs, pockets of refuge and sources of subsistence.

Nomads differ from migrants because they do not want to depart. They do not leave behind ‘a milieu that has become amorphous or hostile’ but cling ‘to the smooth space’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 1988: 381) by moving across that space. The simultaneous assertion of the movement and non-movement of nomads may seem paradoxical, but it makes sense if arguing that nomads are always on the move without moving in an ordinary sense from A to B. Nomadism involves absolute rather than relative movement. Whereas the movement of migrants is a relative, extensive movement between striated, delimited localities, the absolute movement of nomads is an intensive movement within a non-limited locality, a smooth space. And whereas migrants move from one kind of place, which has ceased to be habitable, to a different kind of place, which they hope to find habitable, nomads constantly move amongst the same kind of places to find a basis for habitation and to be able to stay—not within that place in particular but within that kind of place. Thus, nomads move elsewhere to be able to stay ‘here’.

Still, homeless people are different from other nomads. Whereas previous writings suggest that nomads are not homeless but ‘capable of creating [a] home everywhere’ (Braidotti, 1994: 16; see also Wood, 2004), homeless people are indeed homeless. They do not have a home everywhere and they are unlikely to be able to create a home everywhere. Rather, they may move in nomadic ways in search of a home or a dwelling which temporarily may have to serve as a home. While this may take homeless people elsewhere, back to the same place, and just about anywhere, it is unlikely to take them everywhere.

How, then, may one go about determining whether or not homeless nomadism constitutes resistance or other kinds of coping? While nomadic movement may be seen as an ordinary feature of homeless life whereby homeless people cope with the hardships of being homeless (e.g. May, 2000; Spradley, 1970), this is also a feature which makes them deviate from mainstream norms of behaviour or help them appear as if they conform to mainstream norms of behaviour (Ruddick, 1996; Wright, 1997). But does that mean that homeless nomadism per se constitutes resistance to a specific target such as the intentions, concepts and discourses that inform planners’ reconstruction of a public place? No. That would depend on where their nomadic movements take them. Homeless people nomadically moving elsewhere would be coping rather than resisting planners’ attempts to drive them out of a particular place. Homeless people nomadically returning to the same place would be resisting, as would homeless people explicitly and non-nomadically occupying and refusing to leave a particular place (cp. Mitchell, 1995).

Studying homeless coping and resistance to urban planning in Stockholm

According to the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare there were approximately 3,200 homeless people in Stockholm in 2005, of which 500 lived on the street and in public places. There is no indication that these numbers have decreased, and homeless groups have argued that the actual numbers were twice as high and continuing to increase. At the same time, urban planning efforts in Stockholm have sought to force out homeless people from particular public places. To investigate how homeless people resist and otherwise cope with urban planning, I chose to focus on the recent reconstructions of the two public places Odenplan and Fridhemsplan between 2000 and 2002.

Officially, planners were concerned with improving public transport facilities at Odenplan and local shopping facilities at Fridhemsplan, and with making both places safer, more pleasant and more beautiful. However, they also viewed the homeless people dwelling there as a problem to be removed. These issues were not obvious at the outset of my research. Initially I was more broadly interested in the goals, procedures, design practices and outcomes of urban planning projects. I therefore read stacks of planning documents, made observations at Odenplan, Fridhemsplan and other public places in Stockholm, and conducted semi-structured interviews with six urban planners who had been involved in the reconstructions. The interviews were conducted face-to-face, tape-recorded, transcribed and averaged one hour. I gained access through a combination of purposeful sampling and snowballing (Strauss and Corbin, 1990).

But these documents and interviews suggested that the planners not only viewed the homeless people dwelling at Odenplan and Fridhemsplan as a problem but that they demonized them. At the same time, my initial observations indicated that some homeless people continued to inhabit Odenplan but that most homeless people had left Fridhemsplan. This alerted me to find out more about how the homeless handled and experienced the reconstructions. To investigate this I conducted semi-structured interviews with 16 homeless people. Negotiating access was difficult: homeless people (particularly women) tend to be hard-to-reach and most homeless dwellers had left Odenplan and Fridhemsplan. Combining purposeful sampling and snowballing (Strauss and Corbin, 1990), I therefore contacted homeless people via day-shelters and asked day-shelter employees and homeless people to recommend homeless respondents with experience from Odenplan and Fridhemsplan. In addition to individual interviews I conducted two group interviews, a format often recommended to access disadvantaged and hard-to-reach groups (e.g. Wilkinson, 2004). All homeless respondents were white and middle-aged, all except four came from Swedish ethnic backgrounds, and all except two were men. Nevertheless, this reflects the actual group of homeless dwellers at Odenplan and Fridhemsplan quite well. I was able to tape-record half of the interviews but transcribe all of them. These interviews were conducted face-to-face and averaged 45 minutes.

I asked the planners and the homeless different questions. Without invoking a dualism between the planners as mere producers of public space and the homeless as mere users, the planners’ animosity towards the homeless and the fact that I had observed homeless people at Odenplan after the reconstruction suggested that the two groups had very different relationships to the reconstructions. I therefore compared their responses by comparing what the planners sought to achieve with what the homeless did. I conducted all interviews in 2005 and 2006.

To broaden my understanding of the case I conducted face-to-face interviews with three day-shelter employees and telephone interviews with three social workers. I made unstructured non-participant observations between 2003 and 2006 to study how Odenplan and Fridhemsplan had been reconstructed and how they were being used, making mental notes during my observations as well as scratch notes and full notes afterwards. I also read articles about the reconstructions and about homeless people in Stockholm in local newspapers, the local homeless magazine Situation Sthlm and a homeless mailing-list. In addition, I attended an outdoor public meeting on homelessness in 2005 as well as a discussion group in 2006.

I tried to approach this material in an abductive and thematic manner. Rather than generating an all-encompassing category to generalize my findings, this enabled me to exploit the richness of the material to identify a number of specific themes of coping and resistance. Going back and forth between my findings and the literatures discussed above, I identified, compared and contrasted specific forms of coping, and analysed how they constituted mere coping strategies or actual resistance practices.

As a younger middle-class business school academic, I expected to be met by some suspicion by the homeless and I felt awkward about standing out amongst them. I was therefore conscious about approaching them with humility. Particularly in the beginning, I was cautious about the questions I asked and how I asked them. I was also careful about what I wore, choosing plain casual clothes and avoiding colourful smart-casual clothes. Although it was initially difficult to find respondents, I did not encounter homeless people who declined to be interviewed and I did not experience suspicion from those I interviewed. Even respondents who came across as quiet and introvert seemed to appreciate my research interest, and while some respondents were more talkative than others this was regardless of how they related to the reconstructions.

Doing research with marginalized and disadvantaged groups poses fundamental ethical and political questions. While homeless research has handled this in different ways (see e.g. Duneier, 1999; Paradis, 2000; Snow and Anderson, 1993), Duneier (1999) has gone further than most in getting to know, interacting with and remunerating his respondents—working as a street vendor and helping them out with favours and money, involving them in his teaching, and sharing book royalties. Few social scientists immerse themselves in the field like Duneier, but most contemporary homeless research is careful to make sure that homeless people are not exploited as mere research subjects or harmed through the research.

As my starting point was not homelessness but urban planning, my opportunity to immerse myself in the field ended up being somewhat limited. I managed to get to know one of the respondents quite well, discussing my research findings with him at length, but the nomadic aspects of homeless life made it difficult to maintain contact with others. I am sorry that I was not able to do more in the way of getting to know and help the homeless people I interviewed, but all along I strived to avoid an exploitative and hierarchical relationship. I paid some but not all of them for the interviews, partly because I was not quite sure what to do, partly because I worried that an up-front payment would reinforce a researcher-respondent hierarchy. From others I purchased a copy of Situation Sthlm. While I tried to avoid positioning myself as an expert or being positioned as such, I offered advice and support on issues relating to homeless charity organizations, activism, the social services and local government, and I have recently involved one respondent in my teaching as a paid guest lecturer. Although my interest in homeless life has been primarily related to urban planning issues, I was careful not to let this shape the entire research process (see Paradis, 2000). I asked open-ended questions about homeless life in general as well as specific questions about the reconstructions, and I encouraged respondents to raise any issue they found important. The ability of researchers to speak on behalf of others is at best limited and at worst suspect and harmful (e.g. Clifford and Marcus, 1986; Westwood, 2006). But rather than exploiting or doing harm to homeless people, I hope that writing up part of the research in this article highlights some of their problems and helps alleviate the conditions under which they live, at least in the longer run (Fischer, 2003).

Planning and designing to remove the homeless

A detailed investigation of the planning and design practices that were exercised at Odenplan and Fridhemsplan is beyond the scope of this article. Let me nevertheless start off by describing the planners’ discursive construction of the homeless as well as their discursive and spatial construction of Odenplan and Fridhemsplan. The planners assumed that homeless people constituted a homogeneous, marginalized and powerless group, they viewed the homeless dwelling there as a problem to be removed, and they reconstructed the two places to remove the homeless. Often referring to homeless people in a generic way as ‘drunks’, ‘addicts’ and ‘junkies’, planners expressed much concern about the homeless people inhabiting Odenplan and Fridhemsplan before the reconstructions. At Odenplan homeless dwellers were seen to make other people uncomfortable and unsafe. In the words of one planner, ‘[Odenplan] was an unsafe place. Drunks were hanging out there, one was afraid to walk there’. This impression was echoed by her colleague:

It was a hangout. People didn’t dare passing through the small park. There were walls and […] people felt unsafe because they were harassed by the people who hung out there.

At Fridhemsplan, homeless dwellers were also blamed for creating an uncomfortable and unsafe environment, and alongside pigeons and ‘old ladies’, they were blamed for the mess, unhygienic conditions and wear and tear. One planner made the following comment:

A lot of homeless people lived there with their mattresses. They even lived in the elevators. […] Even if the place was cleaned every day it wasn’t possible to keep it clean.

Emphasizing the messy and unsafe conditions at Fridhemsplan, the architect who was hired to design the new shopping centre gave a more graphic description:

People slept there overnight, it smelt like a urinary and it was generally unpleasant. […] the woman who took pictures for us of the old precinct had to run away because a junky tried to steal her camera. That’s how frightening an environment it was […]. And when they started the construction work they had to go in with a bulldozer to remove all the sand because it smelt of urine. They had to come in with new sand down there.

These attitudes informed the reconstruction plans for both Odenplan and Fridhemsplan. At both places planners sought to create a physically open space more amenable to surveillance and social control by security guards, shopkeepers and ‘ordinary’ citizens and less amenable to homeless dwelling. At Odenplan benches, brick walls and shrubbery which had previously provided homeless people with a secluded place for rest, dwelling and social contact were removed. According to one of the Odenplan planners:

People must have free sight and a good sense of orientation—security—so that’s what we created. We removed the brick walls. They couldn’t stay. […] The drunks? They had to move.

At Fridhemsplan dark corners were removed, and the public area which had previously afforded homeless dwelling was drastically reduced and replaced with a shopping centre. One of the Fridhemsplan planners argued that

The goal […] was to reconstruct Fridhemsplan because it had become an impossible place. One couldn’t take care of the homeless and the addicts anyway. […] Homelessness cannot be resolved through reconstruction, but this can at least make it move.

The planners largely regarded the reconstruction projects as a success. The architect at Fridhemsplan argued that

The whole project was a penalty kick. With the troubled background we couldn’t miss. Everybody was so positive about the whole thing so we got to build it the way we wanted. And commercially it’s highly successful.

Similarly, one of the Odenplan planners said that

It works very well, considering the criteria and pre-requisites we faced: open up and remove all junk, create a solid floor […]. We managed to clean up.

In summary, it may be argued that the planners mobilized a discourse of social order, hygiene and safety which demonized the homeless, and a discourse of planning as a practice of spatial-social engineering. Albeit on a local urban scale, the latter asserted the status and power of planners as master organizers whose will would largely prevail in the face of resistance from core and marginalized user groups, and it construed public space as both socially and materially mouldable by means of urban planning. Further, the planners mobilized an architectural discourse of open functionalist design. Despite the spatial openness privileged in this discourse, it assumes a deeply striated space wherein planners may accomplish social order, hygiene and safety by delimiting how and by whom places may be used and inhabited.

Homeless movements, place-making and identity-work

Homeless people did not voice dissent or organize protests against the reconstructions during the planning process or during the construction work. Unlike other stakeholders, they were not invited to participate in the planning process because the planners viewed them as part of the problem. Nevertheless, they coped with the reconstructions through a variety of spatial and discursive practices, some of which contradicted and resisted the planners’ discursive construction of Odenplan and Fridhemsplan as striated space.

Nomadic movements of distancing, return and arrival

The most apparent practices of spatial coping involved nomadic movements of distancing, return and arrival. In contrast to some of the previous research on the nomadic aspects of homeless life (May, 2000; Spradley, 1970), homeless people did not move according to fixed patterns or intervals, along the same routes to be at a particular place at a particular time. Rather, their nomadic movements were dynamic and unpredictable movements across a smooth space, taking different routes at different times between several different places that they found particularly habitable or simply more habitable than other places.

This does not mean that the smooth space that homeless people nomadically moved across was unaffected by the planners’ striation efforts. Indeed, most of the homeless who used to dwell at Odenplan and Fridhemsplan prior to the reconstructions have started to follow smooth routes that avoid these overly striated spaces. Engaging in nomadic movements of distancing, they have left and moved elsewhere because the reconstructions changed the two places so much that they are no longer the same kind of place but less habitable for homeless people and less habitable than other places. As argued by two respondents who used to dwell at Fridhemsplan, ‘the shopping centre at Fridhemsplan […] made it impossible to stay on’. Similarly, one who often dwelled at Odenplan argued that ‘People escaped [from Odenplan] when they removed the brick walls’.

Instead, they now move between day-shelters and parks near Odenplan and Fridhemsplan as well as tube stations, parks and forests in other parts of town. Homeless people found these places more habitable in part because they were more secluded, thereby enabling them to be less visible to security guards and other people. Some previous dwellers now spend much time in or around the central station. Others go to a tube station at the other end of town which has a long history as a homeless meeting place. Finding night-shelters overcrowded, scary and violent, many of the homeless who used to spend nights at Fridhemsplan now prefer to sleep on cardboard sheets or mattresses in apartment block stairways, dumpsters, garbage rooms and road tunnel ventilation systems, or in tents and plastic covers in parks and nearby forests. Some of the homeless who used to dwell at Odenplan often go to one of the parks down the road instead. Located next to the public library and on the roof of a McDonalds restaurant, they found this place attractive because it afforded seating and shelter as well as seclusion. As one respondent argued, ‘One can sit on the roof, it’s got benches and stuff. And it’s good because it gets a lot of sunshine. It’s a classic place’.

However, not all of the homeless who used to dwell at Odenplan and Fridhemsplan have stayed away. Instead, they engaged in nomadic movements of return and arrival. Whilst moving between several other places and spending less time at Odenplan and Fridhemsplan than before, they also moved back. In contradiction to the planners’ attempt at striating the two places, they were able to smoothen them out and de-stratify them, incorporating them in a larger smooth space for nomadic movement. For them, at least Odenplan remained the same kind of place despite the reconstruction. And while Fridhemsplan had changed more, it had not changed beyond being habitable. Some of the homeless continue to use the public area next to the new shopping centre as a meeting point. As one respondent argued,

We often meet up at Fridhemsplan. […] It’s central. It’s easy to get there on the tube. It’s close to the liquor store.

In a similar vein, another respondent told me that

I some times come [to Fridhemsplan] to sell [my copies of] Situation Sthlm. It’s good because a lot of people pass through, with the tube station and all.

Others have stopped going to Fridhemsplan but often go to Odenplan, and yet others keep returning to Odenplan. In addition, Odenplan has started to attract homeless people who avoided both places before the reconstructions. In the words of one respondent, ‘Odenplan is still a meeting place, even if not to the same extent’. On several occasions I observed groups of homeless people during day-time and rush hour gather in the centre of the square, next to the tube station entrance—drinking beer, playing the guitar, singing, chatting and having a laugh. But again, while Odenplan had certain qualities, it was one amongst several dwellings and meeting places. As argued by one of the homeless I interviewed at Odenplan:

I go everywhere, all over town, but I often come back here [to Odenplan]. […] It’s easy to meet people I know. […] And I can easily sell my copies of Situation Sthlm here.

While having certain favourite spots, then, homeless people did not settle down permanently in any of them but tended to move dynamically, unpredictably and nomadically across a smooth space, between several places that they found habitable (see Deleuze and Guattari, 1988). For some, this included Odenplan and Fridhemsplan. For others, it no longer did.

Discursive practices of place-making and identity-work

These kinds of nomadic movements involved particular kinds of place-making that challenge dualistic notions of planners as producers of public space and homeless people as (aberrant) users. Similar to arguments in earlier research (Ruddick, 1996; Wright, 1997), previous dwellers at Fridhemsplan had engaged in a very concrete and physical kind of place-making, living there more or less full time with mattresses and other personal belongings. Homeless people who installed themselves with cardboard sheets and mattresses in dumpsters, garbage rooms, etc., continued to engage in this kind of place-making, only not at Odenplan and Fridhemsplan.

However, the homeless in this study also engaged in more subtle kinds of place-making, through discursive rather than spatial practices, by making sense of and expressing particular views about the reconstructions. Similar to previous findings on conformist contra subversive forms of discursive identity-work in CMS (e.g. Holmer-Nadesan 1996; Meriläinen et al., 2004), those who moved elsewhere affirmed the planners’ discursive construction of Odenplan and Fridhemsplan as striated space. Those who returned or arrived countered the planners’ discourse by reinterpreting the spatial reconstructions of Odenplan and Fridhemsplan as still part of their larger smooth space. Further, homeless people who nomadically moved elsewhere tended to express a sense of surrender or apathy, while those who nomadically returned or arrived tended to express a sense of cynicism or contentment. And while these place-making practices enabled particular nomadic movements, they also expressed particular kinds of homeless identity.

Surrender

As the planners had intended, some of the homeless felt pushed out by the reconstructions, forcing them to instead seek shelter and dwellings elsewhere. While spatially and nomadically distancing themselves from Odenplan and Fridhemsplan, they were not able to distance themselves mentally from the reconstructions but forced to surrender. For them, the reconstructions did indeed make homeless dwelling in public space and homeless life as such more difficult. One respondent who used to dwell at Fridhemsplan called the shopping centre ‘a disaster’. Another respondent, who often dwelled at Odenplan, said that

You want peace and quiet, you don’t wanna be disturbed by other people. You have your integrity. But these reconstructions make it more difficult to meet people. It’s a matter of moving from place to place. It’s like a witch hunt.

As noted above, some of the CMS literature highlights how employees affirm or conform to ascribed identities by active engagement in identity-work (e.g. Collinson, 2003). In contrast, homeless people who surrendered to the planners in the way described here conformed to the planners’ intentions and passively affirmed their view of the homeless as marginalized and powerless. As a result, they seemed to have no choice but to move elsewhere.

Apathetic distancing

Others who had left Odenplan and Fridhemsplan distanced themselves both spatially and mentally from the reconstructions. Whereas previous research in CMS tends to associate distancing with cynicism (e.g. Collinson, 1992; Fleming and Spicer, 2003), these respondents distanced themselves by expressing a sense of apathy. Rather than cynically distancing themselves by expressing disbelief in and disagreement about the reconstructions, they distanced themselves mentally by expressing disinterest—both in the planners’ intentions and in the actual effects that the reconstructions might have. As argued by one respondent at Odenplan: ‘The reconstruction? It doesn’t matter. We’ll just move somewhere else’.

Such expressions of apathetic distancing did not, however, constitute a passive and fatalistic response, but enabled homeless people to actively accommodate and adjust to the reconstructions and trivialize their effects. They left Odenplan for other places because they wanted to and not because they were forced out. By distancing themselves mentally as well as spatially, they also affirmed a distinct and autonomous homeless identity, as different but not powerless. This identity, very different from that assumed on their behalf by the planners, enabled them to inhabit other places with a sense of autonomy. Commenting on how they use the park down the road from Odenplan and how they relate to other groups using it, one respondent explained:

Students and people having lunch are down by the pond. There are even people sunbathing down there. We—the homeless—are further up, under the tree. They don’t disturb us and we don’t disturb them. Not even the police disturb us. That place is sort of taboo.

Cynical defence

Homeless people who some times returned to Odenplan challenged the reconstructions in a more direct sense, both spatially and discursively. Rather than trivializing the reconstruction and apathetically distancing themselves from its intentions and effects, they were able to nomadically return to Odenplan by cynically defending themselves against the reconstruction and the power of planners to colonize and manage the place according to particular goals and intentions. In contrast to previous arguments about cynical defence (e.g. Fleming, 2005) but more in line with previous arguments about the candid defence and assertion of established self-identities (e.g. Down and Reveley, 2009; Merläinen et al., 2004), these respondents did not end up complying with the planners’ intentions while privately disagreeing with them or rejecting them. Rather, they refused to stay away and were determined to use the place however and whenever they wanted to, even if it had become more striated and less habitable than before. As one respondent asserted:

The effect of the reconstruction? Not a bit. None whatsoever. They’ll never get rid of us. We can’t be driven away. We come here when we want.

Strongly expressing their refusal to stay away, these respondents tended to affirm and embrace their homeless identity even more vigorously than those who expressed apathetic distancing—taking pride in being homeless, in their ability to return whenever they wanted to, and in their ability to get by in public space. Contrary to previous research that tends to view homeless identity affirmation as a result of spatial marginalization (Ruddick, 1996; Wright, 1997), some of them contested the planners’ demonization of homeless people by embracing a homeless identity which involved a very different kind of place-making from what the planners accused them of. One respondent argued that

We don’t destroy or litter public space. All the litter, all the empty cans, bottles and boxes you see in parks and public places come from middle class picnics, office workers’ lunch hours and teenagers getting drunk on weekends. We keep public space nice and neat by tidying up after the rest. It’s not just about making a small sum on empty bottles and cans. We want to keep it nice and tidy. After all, public space is our living room.

Although this illustrates the role of social differentiation in identity affirmation (Snow and Anderson, 1993; Garcia and Hardy, 1997), it reverses the assumed hierarchy of ‘homeless people as messy’ and ‘ordinary citizens as neat’.

Contentment

Others who kept coming back to Odenplan and Fridhemsplan after the reconstructions did not challenge the reconstructions at all. Similar to some extant research in CMS (e.g. Ezzamel et al., 2001), they expressed a sense of contentment, finding the new design at Odenplan not intrusive but an improvement. One respondent said that ‘Odenplan has improved a great deal. It’s more transparent’. Similar views were expressed by homeless people who used to avoid Odenplan before the reconstruction but now had started to go there. Two of them described ‘old’ Odenplan as ‘wild west’ territory. Another argued that ‘Odenplan was quite rowdy [before the reconstruction]. There were a lot of [homeless] people who drank and disturbed others’. A fourth respondent argued that ‘[Odenplan] is better now than before. It’s quite neat. […] I come here a few times a week now.’ As suggested by some of the quotes a few pages back, respondents who returned to Fridhemsplan expressed a more moderate sense of contentment. Rather than viewing the reconstruction as an improvement, they continued to appreciate Fridhemsplan for its central location and easy tube access.

While these respondents did not distance themselves from the reconstructions, from homeless identity or from the homeless role, they also did not affirm a strong sense of homeless identity. They did not take particular pride in being homeless, and, in keeping with previous arguments (e.g. Snow and Anderson, 1993), their attitude towards other homeless people suggests that they distanced themselves from homeless people as a group.

Affirming and reinterpreting space and identity

Whereas extant research in CMS has viewed the crafting of alternative spaces of subjectivity as a kind of cynical escape (e.g. Fleming, 2005), my findings suggest that some of the homeless both crafted an alternative sense of self and an alternative sense of space without expressing cynical escape. Instead, they did so through expressions of cynical defence and contentment. And in contrast to previous research on homeless micro-resistance (Ruddick, 1996; Wright, 1997), they did not distance themselves from homeless identity as such. Other homeless people, who nomadically moved elsewhere because they surrendered in face of the reconstructions, were not able to craft an alternative sense of space but confirmed the planners’ view of homeless people as a homogeneous and powerless group that would leave as a result of the reconstructions. Yet others, who nomadically moved elsewhere because they apathetically distanced themselves from the reconstructions, did challenge the planners’ view of homeless people as a homogeneous and powerless group, but they were still not able to craft an alternative sense of space at Odenplan or Fridhemsplan. However, homeless people who nomadically returned because they cynically defended themselves against the reconstructions or nomadically returned or arrived because they expressed contentment were able to craft an alternative sense of self and space. Homeless people who expressed cynical defence crafted an autonomous homeless identity and they affirmed Odenplan as their place, thereby contesting the planners’ assumptions about homeless people and their intentions with Odenplan and Fridhemsplan. Homeless people who expressed contentment crafted a more ambiguous identity. While this contrasted with the planners’ generic and stereotypical image of homeless people, this also contradicted the planners’ anticipations and intentions.

Discursive coping and spatial resistance

Now, did these spatial and discursive micro-practices constitute resistance, or did they merely constitute practices of accommodation and adjustment? While the emphasis on discursive micro-practices has enabled previous research in CMS to find resistance virtually everywhere, investigating spatial micro-practices in their own right changes the criteria for answering this question. Since the planners tried to drive out the homeless from Odenplan and Fridhemsplan, it would only make sense to argue that homeless people resisted insofar as they did not leave or stay away but instead returned to or started to frequent Odenplan or Fridhemsplan. Hence, and contrary to previous research in CMS (see Ezzamel et al., 2001), contentment did not undermine resistance. Rather, contentment as well as cynical defence enabled homeless people to resist because it enabled them to nomadically return or arrive. Apathetic distancing, however, did not. Instead, it led homeless people to accommodate the planners’ intentions, leave, and nomadically move elsewhere. And even though contentment and cynical defence enabled spatial micro-practices of resistance, these discursive micro-practices did not constitute resistance in their own right.

Further on, this contrasts with previous research on spatial resistance practices. While homeless research on collective action and activism has emphasized the importance of visible organized protest (see Mitchell, 1995), homeless research on micro-resistance has emphasized practices of impression management, place-making and spatial movement that make homeless people invisible in mainstream public places (see Ruddick, 1996; Wright, 1997). Similarly, previous research in CMS has viewed spatial distancing and absence as a form of micro-resistance (see Collinson, 1992, 1994). In contrast, the nomadic movements through which homeless people resisted in this case involved a visible if temporary presence. While the planners were largely unaware that homeless people nomadically but openly returned to or started frequenting Odenplan and Fridhemsplan, their movements and place-making subverted, undermined and escaped the planners’ intentions. This exceeds any dualism which would construe planners as producers and homeless as users of public space. Exercising spatial tactics, they did not appropriate Odenplan or Fridhemsplan—indeed, that might have worked to striate these two places, invoking them with a distinct meaning, delimited use and discrete identity albeit in opposition to the striation intended by the planners. Rather, they moved in and out of these and other places, ‘play[ing] on and with a terrain imposed […] and organized by the law of a foreign power’ (de Certeau, 1984: 37), manipulating and intervening in their ascribed meaning, use and identity, fragmenting them, de-stratifying them and making them part of a larger smooth space.

The power of spatial micro-practices of resistance

How effective, then, were these spatial micro-practices of resistance? Even though they were non-intentional, this depends on what they are seen to resist. The nomadic movements through which homeless people returned to or arrived at Odenplan and Fridhemsplan were not able to influence the planning process or change the spatial design of Odenplan or Fridhemsplan. And while those who resisted by nomadically moving in and out of these places did not regard the reconstructions as an impairment to homeless living conditions, they were also not able to improve the conditions under which homeless people live.

However, these forms of resistance may be regarded effective in other ways. Since the reconstructions were aimed to drive out the homeless, nomadic movements that involved homeless people returning to or starting to frequent Odenplan or Fridhemsplan were effective insofar as they subverted the planners’ success in achieving this aim. And since Odenplan was reconstructed in the delimited interest of public transport and Fridhemsplan was reconstructed in the delimited interest of shopping, homeless dwellers who simply hung out there recreated their socio-spatial configuration in ways that subverted the planners’ power to influence how and by whom the two places should be used. Homeless people returning to or arriving at Odenplan or Fridhemsplan may also be seen to exercise an effective form of resistance in a broader sense. Even if nomadically moving in and out of the places rather than settling down permanently, they challenged the spatial and social marginalization of homeless people by continuing to make homeless people and the social problem of homelessness visible to other people, in public space.

This puts nomadic movements of return and arrival in an interesting relationship to the notion of micro-emancipatory practices highlighted in some of the extant CMS literature (see Alvesson and Willmott, 2002). Both are micro-political practices which, while precarious and limited in their effects, express the strengths of the weak in face of the powerful. And while nomadism is not unrelated to discursive and interpretive practices of identity-work, it is fundamentally a spatial practice. More than an enactment and negotiation of identity, nomadism is an enactment and negotiation of space, accomplished through spatial movements as such and through discursive and interpretive practices whereby people make sense of space in alternative ways. Finally, the micro-emancipatory practices highlighted in the CMS literature are seen to be enabled by and exploit the fluidity and plurality of management discourse. Although nomadism may thrive in flexible discursive regimes, nomadism is also able to subvert the rigidity of both discursive and spatial structures.

Conclusion

The spatial micro-practices through which homeless people resisted and otherwise coped with the reconstructions of Odenplan and Fridhemsplan challenge the understanding of resistance which in recent years has dominated poststructuralist and Foucauldian work in CMS. While a pre-occupation with discursive micro-practices has enabled this research to, almost by default, find resistance everywhere without investigating its actual whereabouts, studying spatial micro-practices of coping and resistance in their own right yields a different conclusion. Rather than finding resistance everywhere, in a metaphorical sense, the spatial movements and whereabouts of homeless people suggest that resistance was merely somewhere. Only homeless people who returned to or started frequenting Odenplan or Fridhemsplan resisted the reconstructions. Those who moved elsewhere accommodated and adjusted to them. These resistance practices were related to and enabled by discursive micro-practices of cynicism and contentment through which homeless people negotiated an alternative sense of space. However, discursive micro-practices alone did not constitute resistance. They only made resistance possible insofar as they gave rise to spatial micro-practices of resistance. This construes spatial practices as an outcome of discursive practices, but without implying a causal or unidirectional relationship. In other settings, discursive practices might be facilitated by spatial practices mobilized in the discursive expression of interests and identities. Further, spatial and discursive practices may contradict one another, as people say one thing but move differently.

That the spatial resistance practices examined here were exercised by homeless people and that they have had limited effects on planning practice or on the living conditions of homeless people does not mean that they are irrelevant for CMS or that they are merely relevant for research on homeless people or other groups that are marginalized in organizational life. While investigating the spatial movements and whereabouts of resistance may help future research avoid exaggerating the prevalence and significance of (particularly) discursive forms of micro-resistance, this also suggests that resistance may be exercised in unexpected and non-intentional but still subversive ways by groups that are often thought of as too powerless to do so.

As spatial resistance practices remain under-researched in the CMS literature on resistance and in the CMS literature on space, future research in CMS may therefore want to investigate how such practices are expressed in other spatial contexts—not just by people who tend to be seen as powerless and marginalized in organizational life, but also by people who inhabit the centres as well as the margins, boundaries and borderlands of organizational life. As flexible working hours, working from home, freelancing for multiple employers, blurred work-life boundaries, hot-desking, commuting, and expatriate executive jobs are typical features of contemporary working life, it seems timely to examine how people not just cope with and enact such work arrangements but resist (or fail to resist) them. This might involve nomadic movements that turn the initially striated spaces of organizations into smooth space or it might involve other spatial practices. Employees might hide in play-rooms and meeting-rooms to relax, make do, or engage in politicking; they might unexpectedly barge into offices to challenge managerial decisions; they might eavesdrop on managers in staircases or company canteens; they might move room-dividers and bookshelves back and forth to obstruct surveillance and face-to-face communication; and they might take time-consuming detours between client meetings to take care of personal business rather than company or client business. To evaluate whether or not these practices constitute resistance rather than mere coping, future research would need to analyse whether or not they contradict and subvert organizational norms and principles.

What, then, does this mean for urban planning organizations and homeless people? Even though the planners managed to drive out most of the homeless from Odenplan and Fridhemsplan, it is somewhat surprising that they do not pay more attention to the various ways in which different people actually inhabit such places after they have been reconstructed. Without wanting to help planners manage and organize public space, it is worth noting that planners should not overestimate their own skills and power to do so. Indeed, their lacking awareness of homeless people continuing to move in and out of Odenplan and Fridhemsplan suggests that it may be particularly difficult for them to identify and manage nomadic forms of spatial resistance.

In contrast, I would argue that homeless people in Stockholm and elsewhere may need to work harder to resist what is done to them by planners and other organizational actors. As the nomadic movements through which homeless people resisted have had limited effects on improving their living conditions, homeless people may need to engage in more intentional, explicit and organized forms of resistance. To further fight their spatial and social marginalization and improve the conditions under which they live, homeless people may want to exploit and increase their spatial visibility in public space to voice their own interests. Although nomadically moving in and out of public places such as Odenplan and Fridhemsplan has its own subversive effects, this may require them to occupy such places not permanently but in a more organized and persistent manner. And even though their everyday struggle for survival may restrict the capacity of homeless people to exercise more organized forms of spatial resistance, their ability to craft an alternative sense of space and nomadically inhabit public places where they are not wanted gives some hope that they nevertheless may be able to do so.

For CMS, this means that in addition to disclose organizational practices of oppression and exploitation, we need to study those we want to support. This should not be restricted to people in organizations but include people on the margins of organizational life who often suffer more from what organizations do to them. Without reducing marginalized groups to passive victims of organizational practices, we therefore need to investigate both the problems they face and the ways they deal with them, not in order to tell people how to live but in order to help people organize and fight oppressive and exploitative organizations.