Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity: The Uncanniness of Late Modernity

Extract

Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity: The Uncanniness of Late Modernity. By Kathleen R. Arnold. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004. 212p. $40.00.

This study focuses on the problem of homelessness, though it is not an empirical study designed to propose particular policies to tackle the plight of the homeless and the dislocation of immigrants. The issue of homelessness is used to illustrate some deep-seated difficulties in the modern concept of citizenship and the political identity offered by the contemporary nation-state. The core argument of the book is that modern citizenship rests on a two-fold criterion of work and national identity. Citizens are those who contribute productively through their work and thus can claim to be economically independent. Citizenship is also dependent on membership of a national community. The ideal citizen thus has a home, in both a literal and a metaphorical sense: Such citizens are economically independent through their work, and have a home in a more abstract sense of being part of a territorially based nation-state.