Giustizia sociale, spazio e città. Un approccio teorico-metodologico applicato a un caso studio

Social justice, space and the city. A theorical methodological approach applied to a case study. - Traditional approaches at the studying of “social justice” issues within cities do not usually define clearly how we can understand both “justice” and “the city”. This article faces this issue, tracing an account of justice based upon both an explicit ethics and the relative principle of justice. With these concepts, the article defines a methodology of work that might be useful to grasp social justice matters within the urban, understanding these issues only in relational terms arguing, in other words, that it is necessary to look within the relational processes of the production of urban space to retrieve injustice. Hence, it would apply this methodology to a specific case study based on Turin. The conclusions will offer some suggestion upon the limitations and the opportunities of the path just outlined, as well as some proposition concerning its possible future developments.This is the author accepted manuscript. It is currently embargoed pending publication

A început ploaia (It started raining). A feature documentary around evictions and the fight for housing in Bucharest, Romania

Accordingly to Amnesty International, in Romania ‘the right to housing is not effectively recognized or protected by national legislation’ and Roma people are ‘disproportionally affected’ by forced evictions. A început ploaia is the first feature documentary narrating the full history of, and reasons behind, this continuous harassment and displacement. The film follows the story of the Vulturilor 50 community of Bucharest (100 individuals), whom dwelt on the street from September 2014 to June 2016 in order to fight against the eviction from their home, enacting the longest and most visible protest for housing right in the history of contemporary Romania. The vicissitudes of this community are interpolated with a number of interviews with activists, scholars and politicians, composing a picture that speaks of racial discrimination, homelessness, evictions, but also of grassroots practices of resistance and social change. A început ploaia is the touching testament to the everyday revolution of Roma people fighting forced evictions from the centre of Bucharest, an endeavour made of fragile dwellings, provisional makeshifts and tenuous - but fierce – occupancy of public space

The spectacle of the poor. Or: 'Wow!! Awesome. Nice to know that people care!'

On the night of 14 November 2012, a police officer of the New York Police Department encountered a homeless person while performing his duties around Times Square. He gave him a pair of boots and while doing so, he was photographed by a tourist. The photo was posted on Facebook, receiving in a few days more than 1.6 million visits. The paper unfolds the reasons why this particular image and story have gone, as the media has put it, ‘viral’. The paper investigates the spaces that have emerged in the media elongation of DePrimo's practice of care and, introducing the notion of ‘spectacle of the poor’, it argues that this specific case simplifies the dominant western framings around matter of ‘caring for the poor’. The political and cultural consequences of these framings are investigated, and reflections on how to tackle them provided.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Taylor & Francis via http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2014.91674

Homeless Subjects and the Chance of Space. A More-Than-Human Geography of Homelessness in Turin

This work is based upon an ethnographic enquiry in Turin, North-West of Italy, to interrogate homelessness as a subjective condition that emerges from the entanglements of the individual and the city. Arguing that canonical framing of homelessness do not take into full consideration the relationalities and nuances that intervene between homeless people and the mechanosphere of the city, this work develops a detailed theoretical and empirical investigation of the more- than-human entanglements through which homeless subjects emerge in the opening and closures of urban spaces. Three research questions are pursued: the first two investigating how subjects are constituted in the process of being and becoming a homeless individual, and the third questioning how the public and private institutions that provide service to homeless people actually open or close opportunities to them. The concept of chance of space has been developed to sustain the hypothesis that city’s space offers infinite potentialities to homeless subjects, which however are constantly codified and normalized by the discursive and relational powers consciously and unconsciously at work in the urban fabric. The research questions have been tackled through an in-deep ethnographic investigation developed in three long chapters, which lead to theoretical and political outcomes. This work shows that interrogating homelessness in a more-than-human fashion a world of multiples subjects emerges, with various attitudes, capabilities, relational and affective characterizations. It opens the door to the recognition of spatial chances that might lead, if recognized and enacted, to enrich homeless subjects’ perspectives. According, a critique of the mainstream normative approach on homelessness is developed, arguing in favour of new ethical stances that extend the validity of this enquiry beyond Turin’s case. This ethics claims the necessity to take seriously the entanglements between space, time and the homeless subject; advocates a right to difference and consequently to differentiated interventions; and argues for the necessity to challenge the rigidity of certain urban contexts in order to enact homeless people own capabilities