This presentation will focus on an aspect of a larger project looking at the treatment of the single homeless in England. In general our legal framework assumes that citizens are autonomous individuals who are free to live and provide for themselves in ways they think fit. It accepts however that certain individuals can legitimately be excepted from these assumptions, typically women, children and the vulnerable. Provision is made for these groups through legislation. The book will develop two strands of socio-legal thoughts or explorations around this basic framework. First it looks at how these legal exceptions work in contemporary times and second it looks at the consequences for those who are not considered legitimate exceptions. In particular how are the lives of those who are excluded from the statutory scheme also shaped by law? One aspect we will focus on is how care can be a challenge to the liberal paradigm. The paper follows the homeless person’s pet through the ‘lawscape’ of homelessness to explore, through acts of translation and association, its spaces of care, dependency and control. The paper argues that the pet (usually, but not always a dog) provides a productive vantage point from which to explore care and homelessness because it highlights a close and perhaps unexpected juxtaposition of care and control as well as disrupting the normative asymmetry of care and dependency. The pet also opens the homeless person to a range of criminal interventions. A focus on the pets of the homeless therefore helps us rethink care, understanding the homeless as providers as well as recipients of care, entrepreneurs of the self as well as beggars, and that provision and receipt of care can simultaneously include and exclude the homeless in multiple and unexpected ways. Helen Carr is a reader in law at Kent Law School, University of Kent. Helen's research interests lie primarily in the fields of Housing, Social Welfare and Public Law. She is interested in the regulation of the poor especially the homeless, the asylum seeker, the anti-social and those in need of care. Helen is particularly concerned with the gendered and racialised dimensions of regulation. Caroline Hunter is professor of law at York Law School, University of Law. Caroline’s research interest lie in the boundaries between law, policy and practice, focusing on housing as a site of these interactions. Together they are writing a book: Governing the homeless: law, governance and plurality at the margins to be published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2015.

1. Caring at the borders of the
human: homeless people and
their companion animals
Helen Carr H.P.Carr@kent.ac.uk and Caroline Hunter
caroline.hunter@york.ac.uk
Talk at the International Institute for the
Sociology of Law - Oñati
• Date: 12th February 2014

2. Outline
 Introduction
 Themes of the book
 methodologies
 Human Animal studies
 Companion animals in contemporary culture
 The homeless and companion animals
 Bringing the law back in – shifting jurisdictions and legal
geographies
 Progressive projects

3. Introduction
 Exploration via homelessness of how we live our lives with
law
 What contribution can critical/feminist socio-legal
scholarship make to social welfare debates?
 What is missing from socio-legal scholarship which might
prove productive?

4. Key themes
 Working at the borders
 Interface of the technical/doctrinal and the theoretical
 Limits of the state
 Inclusion/exclusion
 Scale and jurisdiction
 Citizenship
 care

5. Starting points
 Homelessness as liberal legal exceptionalism
 Liberal autonomous man
 Fluidity of categories of exception
 Draconian consequences of exclusion
 Leonard Feldman ‘Citizens without Shelter: Homelessness
Democracy and political exclusion ‘
 the homeless become ‘outlaws’ , non-citizens, who are ‘both outside
of the law’s protection (exclusion) and subject to law’s punishment
(inclusion) (Feldman 2004: 101). For Feldman it is not simply the
punitive responses to homeless people that reduces them to a form of
bare life, compassionate responses have the same effect.

6. Points of development and
departure
 Value
 Understanding homelessness as a political problem
 Need to avoid misrecognising the homeless
 Acknowledgement of the important of legislative and judicial constructions of
homelessness
 Need for a pluralised understanding of home
 Concern
 Overemphasis on punitive role of state
 Too easy dismissal of compassion and care in connection with the homeless
‘mainstream accounts of urban injustice – largely fixated on the punitive – are
disconnected from the more ambiguous, if not supportive approaches to how
vulnerable goups are managed ‘on the ground’ (DeVerteuil 2012:1)

7. Multiple methodologies

8. Why homeless people and their
pets?

where humans live ‘very closely and purposefully with other species, …it goes
without saying that (their) stories cannot properly be told without including the
full cast of supporting actors’ (Franklin 2006:138).

May help



Avoid polarities of cultural representations of the homeless
enable the re-imagination ‘categories of public, citizenship, home and justice in
responding to the contemporary traps and blind alleys of homeless politics’ (Feldman
2004 :24).
productive vantage point from which to explore care and homelessness because it



highlights a close and perhaps unexpected juxtaposition of care and control
Challenges accounts of social provision as relentlessly punitive
disrupts the normative asymmetry of care and dependency.

9. Human Animal studies
 seeks to understand animals in the context of human
society
 ‘In times of liquid modernity, makeover culture and an
experimental, playful and open-ended domesticity, we
must begin to bring in perspectives that can cope with this
complexity, with its relational materialism, its sociotechnical hybridity and semiotics’ (Franklin 2006:138).

10. Theoretical concerns
 Animal rights
 Challenging the boundary between the human and the
animal
 Feminists and lawyers have much to contribute and gain
from the debate
 Haraway, Seager, Sarat and Fox

11. Seagar 2003: 168
Elucidating the commonalities in structures of oppressions
across gender, race, class, and species; developing
feminist-informed theories of the basis for allocating
‘rights’ to animals; and exposing the gendered
assumptions and perceptions that underlie human
relationships to non-human animals. At the same time,
the serious contemplation of animal rights makes a
considerable contribution to destabilizing identity
categories and adds new dimensions to theorizing the
mutability of identity

12. Companion animals in
contemporary society
 Growth in pet ownership, and accompanying economy
 Move from ownership and ornament to companionship
and protection

13. Why?
 Rooted in contemporary ontological insecurity
 ‘humans began to build social and emotional ties with animals
because it had become increasingly difficult for them to establish
and maintain such ties among themselves’ (Franklin 1999:36)
 Productive source
 This ‘lived intersubjectivity’ of two beings sharing a
messy, awkward, loving relationship provides an ideal opportunity
for thinking practically about some of the real-life dilemmas
presented in recent theoretical challenges to
the
animal – human divide and helps us go beyond theories of
destabilized categories to the complex theorizations and practices
of everyday life (Fox 2006: 535)

14. Homeless people and their
companion animals

15. "Bob the cat rescued me from drugs": How
sick stray inspired addict to sell one million
 James had been a homeless heroin addict for more than a
decade when he found stray, injured Bob.The inspiring tail
(!) of their unlikely friendship has now sold 750,000 copies
in the UK alone, and been translated into 27 languages.As
James tells it: “Our story seemed to connect with people
who were facing difficult times in their lives. Hundreds of
them wrote to me or contacted us via social media. I was
immensely proud.”

16. My Dog Always Eats First:
Homeless People and their
Animals Leslie Irvine 2013
 Interviews with 75 homeless pet owners in California and Florida
 Narratives of human-animal relationships
 Friend and family
 The pack of two
 Protectors
 Lifechangers and Lifesavers
 Strategies for coping with stigma
 Redefining ‘good’ pet ownership to cope with the realities of their
everyday existence

17. Irvine’s conclusions
 Caring and feeling cared for seem to improve people’s
sense of self worth
 Strategy for including silenced or marginalized voices
 Includes – via acts of translation - animal’s voices –
provides insights into how people construct the identities
of animals and simultaneously construct identities for
themselves.

18. Animals as home
 We treat animals ‘as if’ they were friends or family, but we
reserve these statuses for other humans. Homeless people
challenge the ‘as if’ qualification because for many of
them, their animals truly are their sole sources of affection and
close companionship 159
 ‘You know, when you have a home, your relationships with
animals take place at home. But when you’re homeless, they
are your home.’ 85
 The narratives also serve as a reminder that we can only
understand and meet the needs of the homeless if we take their
relationships with their pets seriously. 85

19. Animals and the meanings of
home
 Parsell - Home refers to something that people do experience, and
something, moreover, held in high regard. In this respect, home has
meaning on social, emotional, spiritual and material levels. It is a
complex and multi-dimensional concept, and any conceptualisation
needs to be attuned to the dynamic meaning making process people
attribute to it
 Public places the antithesis of home
 For Irvine, family and friends narratives provide a balm, stability and
certainty in the midst of uncertainty and contingency
 Because it exists in a realm apart from the street, the relationship
provides a point of permanence in a shifting terrain of the self

20. reforming the public
 Resistance to stigma enabled by pet food donations etc from
the public
 Income enhancement
 Channel of communication

21. Jurisdictional forms and
companion animals
 What does it mean to own dogs responsibly in the UK?
 The Dangerous Dogs Act 1991
 Responsibility is to the public
 Categorizes certain breeds as dangerous
 Criminal offence to allow a dog to be out of control in a public
place
 The Animal Welfare Act 2006
 Responsibility to the animal
 Prevention of suffering

22. Index of Exempted dogs
 Jamie and his dog Chucky live in a St Mungos hostel in London.
Jamie became homeless after a relationship breakdown and
spent months sofa surfing and rough sleeping before he was
helped by the St Mungos outreach team. Chucky is legally
registered on the Index of Exempted Dogs as an American Pit
Bull Terrier after being seized by police. Due to his gentle nature
and the fact that he poses no risk to the public, he was released
back into Jamie’s care. The restrictions placed on Chucky by the
DDA do make life difficult for Jamie and he sometimes finds it
difficult to give Chucky the exercise he needs. But he wouldn’t
be without him. As Jamie says “I’ve had Chucky since he was 8
weeks old. We’ve got such a strong bond. I’d never have him put
to sleep because he was inconvenient to me. He really is a part
of me”.

23. Contingent destruction order
 Fee £92.40
 Time limit 2 months
 Index number for dog must be produced on demand
 Third party liability insurance
 dog must be neutered, tattooed and microchipped

24. The Dogs Trust Hope Project
 Helps homeless people navigate the dangerous dogs act
 provides free and subsidised veterinary treatment to dogs
whose owners are homeless or in housing crisis
 Advises hostels, shelters and day centres on accepting
clients with dogs.

25. Oxford City Council dog warden
service

26. Oxford City Council dog warden
service
 Chipping and tagging dogs for homeless owners
 Providing collars and leashes