Citizenship and NIMBYism: Identities at the Juncture of Homelessness, Place, and Ideology

Not in my back yard (NIMBY)ism is a form of anti-homeless discrimination intended to displace people experiencing homelessness from urban spaces. While research on anti-homeless discrimination is abundant, the Canadian literature has yet to explore the political dimensions of this type of discrimination. International researchers have studied the connections between homelessness and citizenship, and we take up this theoretical work in this study. We present interview data from people experiencing homelessness in three mid-sized cities in Ontario. Using an analytical framework comprised of citizenship studies, urban geography, and sociological research on stigmatization, we assess participants’ perspectives of their respective communities, their understanding of the typology of homelessness, and how they enact particular kinds of public behaviours. We find that the participants’ public behaviours adapt to the place identity of their community to avoid stigmatization. The participants’ public behaviours are illustrative of how modern citizenship has been reconfigured under capitalism.