The Politics of Space and Everyday Surveillance in a Delhi Homelessness Shelter: An Ethnographic Exploration

In this paper, I offer a unique lens through which to theorize neoliberal governance from the perspective of politics space and everyday surveillance in Akash Sadan, Delhi homeless shelter. Drawing interview data over two years ethnographic research -participant observation -- with children (boys girls), their families, civil society state representatives, bring theories homelessness, surveillance, spatialized control as they connect scholarship on governance, regulation, stigmatization into conversation Miraftab’s (2004) framework mutually constitutive concepts “invited” “invented” spaces participation. Extending framework, conceptualize Aakash Sadan shelter an “invited,” state-sanctioned supported by state-legitimized non-governmental organization (NGO). argue that regulatory power operates spatial territorialism stigmatized exercised NGO primarily league state. This is inseparable community’s historically enforced precarity state-induced dispossession. The empirical case thus demonstrates how convergence these features community can leave residents reduced access basic urgently needed services, heightening experiences poverty precarity.