Homelessness and resilience in East Asia: Punitive policies, poverty management, and hope in Taiwan’s welfare state

Abstract

Homelessness is a complex problem in cities and is shaped by local factors, including economic inequality, punitive policies, poverty management, and individual everyday practices. In East Asia, the local factors in relation to homelessness usually develop within the context of developmental welfare states possessing neoliberal characteristics (e.g., a shadow state and a precarity of care provision) and Confucian characteristics (e.g., a blood-degree relationship and collective familial welfare duty under legislation). Taiwan encompasses both these strands and, therefore, provides a compelling case for understanding homelessness in the East Asian context. Drawing on the complex relationships within homelessness in Taiwan, I conducted 55 semi-structured interviews (i.e., with a policymaker, 21 managers, and 33 homeless support workers), complemented by participant observation to answer three research questions: How has the blend of neoliberalism and Confucianism in cities in Taiwan shaped homeless policies and poverty management? How are homeless services provided by Taiwan’s state and the voluntary sector, and what punitive and supportive characteristics do they exhibit? How do the relational and spatial dynamics of community-based homeless support in Taiwan shape the variety of homeless service workers' motivations and hope for persevering in supporting homeless people? I demonstrate the empirical evidence I gathered to provide answers and make valuable contributions to the literature on the geographies of homelessness and related homeless studies. Firstly, the developmental welfare state blends neoliberalism with Confucianism. It shapes the resilience of homeless people and homeless support workers, involving Confucian merits as the main factor in residual arrangements instead of Keynesian considerations. Secondly, homeless services in Taiwan are employment-led instead of housing-led. Employment-led services possess an essential punitive characteristic and a peculiar accommodating characteristic. Finally, the various motivations to become homeless support workers in Taiwan are driven by secular motives, such as empathising with homeless people and practising social justice. Meanwhile, the motivations are intertwined with various feelings of hopefulness and hopelessness. For example, the promise of improving homeless services and reworking social policies is interwoven with the hopefulness of persisting in providing precarious care and moving to burnout