engleski

Inhabiting Public Spaces in Zagreb: Roofless Women’s Experiences, Strategies and Resistance

People experiencing homelessness, in absence of their own spaces, often have no choice but to live in public urban spaces. Literature points to the increased control of public spaces, including increased policing and regulation/criminalization, leading to the spatial exclusion of homeless people in European cities (Doherty et al., 2008). Instances of ‘hostile architecture’ appear across urban space, aimed at pushing particular behavior and people out of public areas. While urban environments have always been designed with intents toward influencing behavior, design strategies for discriminating against particular groups are continually evolving and on the rise. Analysis of the urban spaces of the city of Zagreb shows the omnipresence of anti-design principles and aggressive architecture, that is particularly directed towards the rising homeless population. This paper looks to understand how those affected by street homelessness respond against or adapt to processes of social and spatial exclusion. More specifically, the focus is on the homeless women’s everyday experiences and vulnerabilities while occupying public spaces in Zagreb that either directly or indirectly exclude them, and their strategies of coping and resistance. Women are studied as they are in a multiply marginal position: they face various structural and social barriers that particularly affect women in society, including discrimination, marginalization, violence and specific stigmas associated with „street women“ and traditional connections of women to private spaces of home. For women in homelessness, using public spaces is especially challenging, both because of their homeless status and because they are women. This research is based on qualitative materials gathered from the CSRP project Exploring Homelessness and Pathways to Social Inclusion: A Comparative Study of Contexts and Challenges in Swiss and Croatian Cities (No. IZHRZO_180631/1), and it draws on interviews conducted with women who experienced street homelessness in Zagreb. Firstly, the paper looks at the challenges women face while living in the streets of Zagreb which point to their various experiences of exclusion, sexual harassment, abuse, continuous feelings of fear and insecurity and stigmatization. Secondly, it analyses these women’s strategies by which they cope, survive and show resistance. Women in our study develop various strategies: they avoid areas they see as unsafe, find and inhabit other areas that provide them with security and protection, break the rules of the spaces they inhabit, establish or strengthen social ties with others and develop various ways to “use space” to contest stigma. In this research, there is an attempt to capture often invisible corners and ways of living of women in homelessness and understand how those who inhabit the urban margins negotiate the conditions of marginality through everyday practices. It is hoped that these discussions will shed a light on often overlooked problem of street homelessness in Croatia and create contextually more specific interventions that includes gender dimensions of the problem.

homelessness, women, resistance, public space

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