Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity: The Uncanniness of Late
Modernity. By Kathleen R. Arnold. Albany: State University of New
York Press, 2004. 212p. $40.00.
This study focuses on the problem of homelessness, though it is not an
empirical study designed to propose particular policies to tackle the
plight of the homeless and the dislocation of immigrants. The issue of
homelessness is used to illustrate some deep-seated difficulties in the
modern concept of citizenship and the political identity offered by the
contemporary nation-state. The core argument of the book is that modern
citizenship rests on a two-fold criterion of work and national identity.
Citizens are those who contribute productively through their work and thus
can claim to be economically independent. Citizenship is also dependent on
membership of a national community. The ideal citizen thus has a home, in
both a literal and a metaphorical sense: Such citizens are economically
independent through their work, and have a home in a more abstract sense
of being part of a territorially based nation-state.