Affiliation:
1. Portland State University, USA
Abstract
In this paper, I contribute to the literature on self-organized houseless encampments in the United States in two ways. First, I draw on Roy’s concept of racial banishment to examine the relationship between encampments and American racial capitalism. Second, I extend Caldeira’s theory of peripheral urbanization – originally developed to describe urban informality in the Global South – to encampments in the United States. Doing so highlights how encampment residents and local government interact with one another through transversal logics. I show how both these frameworks – racial banishment and peripheral urbanization – can help us understand the creation of two self-organized houseless encampments: Dignity Village in Portland and Umoja Village in Miami. In each city, I describe how these encampments not only encountered, but also countered various forms of banishment through creative means.
Subject
Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law,Public Administration,Environmental Science (miscellaneous),Geography, Planning and Development