Can the Subaltern Dwell? Deinstitutionalization and Biopolitical Homelessness

In socio-political debates, institution-based homelessness assistance—often reliant on (quasi-)shelter infrastructures—is frequently labeled "camp-like," invoking Giorgio Agamben's paradigmatic view of the camp as biopolitical nomos, extended to contemporary homelessness infrastructures (Agamben 1998; Feldman 2004; Stevens 2017) It might also explain why the Wrocław-based Homo Sacer Foundation was among the first institutions in Poland to explicitly reject this "camp model," including its Catholic Church-endorsed variant—a notable stance in the Polish context (Ptak 2008). Its flagship initiative, like many global efforts, promoted the Housing First approach: unconditional, independent housing without prerequisites, rupturing the disciplinary logic of camp-based biopolitics. Some recent analyses complicate this narrative (Hennigan 2017; Willse 2010). They argue that Housing First's rise in U.S. urban policy reflects a neoliberal discursive shift, economizing homelessness management without addressing structural housing crises. Yet at least some of their critiques focus mainly on the construction of "chronic homelessness" subjectivity, offering a cursory evaluation of Housing First that overlooks broader conceptual shifts not reducible to an "activist–corporate complex" (Namian 2022). Such critique gains urgency amid the European Care Strategy (2022), which champions deinstitutionalization and Housing First. In Poland, this manifests in national documents like the Guidelines on Deinstitutionalisation of Social Services (MRiPS, 2021–2027) and Social Services Development Strategy 2030, alongside local/regional plans (LPDI/RPDI). Deinstitutionalization is also a condition for EU (ESF+, 2021–2027) and national (BGK) funding. This paper reframes EU deinstitutionalization—not as a humanitarian pivot, but as a Foucauldian biopolitical transformation—questioning its entanglement in neoliberal "homelessness management." Extending previous analyses, it draws on Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's (1988) critique of Foucault and Deleuze's fetishized "liberated" colonial subject. Similarly, deinstitutionalized "exits" from homelessness risk idealizing a biopolitically untainted home, now itself an institutional control mechanism in neoliberalism (Lancione 2023). Grounded in a sub-discursive approach—merging discourse analysis with critical policy ethnography (Dubois 2015)—the analysis leverages the author's dual role as academic theorist and long-term staff at the Wrocław-based MiserArt homelessness support center (est. 2014; once spearheaded by the now-discontinued Homo Sacer initiative).