Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Legacies of Vagrancy Law in Contemporary Homelessness Regulation: A Comparative Historical Examination of the Cases of Tokyo, Japan and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Grant

Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Legacies of Vagrancy Law in Contemporary Homelessness Regulation: A Comparative Historical Examination of the Cases of Tokyo, Japan and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia .

abstract

  • NSF Proposal 1702979 - Doctoral Dissertation Research: Title: The Legacies of Vagrancy Law in Contemporary Homelessness RegulationPI: Matthew MarrCo-PI: Rayna RusenkoStudies examining new initiatives in twenty-first century regulation of homelessness tend to center on advanced Western contexts. They focus on either the significance of contemporary neoliberal ideas or on policy histories. Over the last decade, Japanese and Malaysian government agencies have enacted new policing, shelter, and housing initiatives to achieve zero homelessness. This project will investigate contemporary homelessness regulation in two capital cities in the Asian region;namely, Tokyo, Japan, and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It will examine how homelessness regulations are rooted in the historical development of each nation's welfare and penal systems, thereby giving attention to post/metropolitan and post/colonial contexts. The project will use a global historical lens to inform interdisciplinary literature on neoliberal governance, homelessness regulation, and legacies of imperial and colonial politico-legal cultures. By analyzing key shifts in homelessness regulation across two distinct developmental contexts in Asia, this investigation will advance understanding of the influences of particular state forms and their respective penal and welfare infrastructures with regard to homelessness management. In addition, the project will identify the influences of cross-border networks in the adoption, transformation, and exchange of globally-mobile ideas and practices relating to homelessness regulation in the Asian region. Such investigation is critical for understanding the distinct local forms of contemporary policy regimes, as well as broader cross-border innovations and inter-relations, particularly in light of shared global histories of vagrancy laws and related policy networks.This project will illustrate how current trends in homelessness policy tap into historically-established institutional arrangements and their ideational underpinnings, thereby driving unique policy variations and individual street-level experiences. This project includes the use of comparative historical and ethnographic methods to examine shifts in homelessness regulation in two sites from the late-nineteenth century to the present. The investigator will identify key historical shifts in ideas and institutions underpinning contemporary organization through archival research and interviews, and trace street-level impacts of policy through archival ethnography and ethnographic fieldwork. This project, by its focus on Asian cities of varied developmental statuses, seeks to answer questions regarding historical continuities and breaks in global and local trajectories of homelessness regulation.

date/time interval

  • May 15, 2017 - September 30, 2019

awarded by

administered by

sponsor award ID

  • 1702979

local award ID

  • AWD000000007323

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