Making Better Lives: Hope, Freedom and Home-Making among People Sleeping Rough in Paris

Abstract

Through Making Better Lives , British anthropology makes a necessary – and renewed – propo-sition to the field of homelessness studies. The culmination of two years’ continuous fieldwork in and around the middle of Paris with people of “no fixed abode” ( sans domicile fixé ), Lenhard presents us with a nuanced monograph about homelessness which combines the creativity of his interlocutors with his own originality. Dissatisfied with the notion that homelessness forecloses the possibility of constructing a meaningful life, he asks: how do people experien-cing homelessness make a home on the streets – and why do they? To do this, Lenhard reconstructs his experiences and observations of “hanging out” in a multitude of urban spaces: the Gare du Nord, car parks and green spaces, the sides and insides of retail outlets, mobile drug outreach, day centres, casework offices, hotels and a series of accommodation institu-tions. His key interlocutors – those whom he befriended and with whom he shared his two years – are the common thread across all these spaces. He depicts how his interlocutors inhabited these spaces not merely as a passive means of survival. In fact, he illustrates that they purposefully acted on the world – and their selves – in the present so that they can make a better life.