Micro-visual encounters with homelessness in an urban railway station

This article introduces the concept of micro-visual encounters. More specifically, I explore how homeless people in Termini railway station in Rome are both visibilized and invisibilized through micro-visual encounters. Like microaggressions, these fleeting moments of visual encounter affect homeless people in their everyday lives even if they are small and almost imperceptible. This article makes two contributions. The first reflects on the notions of visibility and invisibility as part of a continuum that takes on a particular significance in the case of stigmatized bodies in public spaces. Micro-visual encounters reveal more about the intersecting nature of visibility and invisibility, which can be conjoined, collective and often ambivalent. Connecting to debates on scale in geography, the second contribution is a contention that micro-visual encounters with homelessness matter and have significance beyond their ‘smallness’. By focusing on homelessness and marginality, I address the power relations inherent within the micro-visual encounter and encounters in general. With visual encounters at the heart of urban life and as a key constituent in the production of space, I will address the significance of these within urban scholarship and investigate how they can point to wider social change – even if only modestly.