History of wandering poverty

By offering a history of wandering poverty in France from the Middle Ages to the present day, André Gueslin digs a little deeper into the furrow that he has already taken in many of his previous works. By focusing this time his attention on the historical figure of the vagabond, the author retraces in clear language and a rigorous approach the total history of a singular and centuries-old poverty: wandering poverty. As usual, André Gueslin mobilizes an extremely rich and diverse palette of historical, legal, ethnological, literary, cinematographic materials, etc., to multiply the descriptive and analytical entries of this world which, quite rightly, leaves few traces. To write the history of wandering poverty is to write “ a story of voiceless men through the traces they leave and the representations that the wealthy have of them “. These representations, if they are observed in particular through abundant literature on the theme of vagrancy and poverty, are more explicitly materialized in a whole legal and repressive arsenal developed for this “ class » deemed idle and dangerous. The political treatment reserved over the centuries for poor and wandering populations thus constitutes a first, decisive entry to objectify the sociological continuities of this world of wandering whose figure has nevertheless evolved from vagabond to tramp, and more recently to Homeless. Other entries, such as the ethnology of daily life, psychology, interactionist and determinist sociologies then complete the picture of this continuity of the figure of the excluded, supernumerary and disaffiliated wanderer, “ inscribed in otherness with its habitus born of wandering and domination » (p. 13), which also constitutes the main thesis defended by the author (p. 455) who does not fail to underline the differences and ruptures depending on the eras, political regimes, economic contexts, social, cultural and religious.

The work, which includes twelve chapters, is constructed according to a chronological division which emphasizes four major periods corresponding to as many figures, representations and social treatment of the vagabond: a first going from the Middle Ages to the modern era, a second corresponding to the advent of industrial society (XIXe century) on which the social state would subsequently be built (1900-1970), and finally the post-Trente Glorieuses period (1970 to the present day) marked by an increase in poverty and wandering.

From status to stigma

In the Middle Ages, vagabond beggars were integrated for theological reasons. Poverty is defined in the form of a social relationship between the dominated and the dominant, against a backdrop of Christianity: the former buy their salvation through their indigence, the latter through charity. As a result, the poor have a real social status: “ For the ordinary man of the Middle Ages, the poor man was seen as a sort of theophany: he was Christ returning to earth. Otherwise he is an intercessor with God » (p. 22). A transition took place at the end of the Middle Ages: the increase in wandering poverty, determined largely by economic crises, epidemics and climatic accidents, had the effect of modifying representations of poverty. Wandering, which concerns XV^e century between 20 and 25% of the French population (p. 28), is less and less tolerated for the economic burden it entails, and the feeling of insecurity it conveys (delinquency, criminality). These changes in representations towards vagabonds and other able-bodied beggars – quickly assimilated to “ bad poor » in the emerging capitalist society demanding ever more labor — announce the time of repression and demonization. In the middle of XVI^e century thus asserts itself, in the social treatment of poverty, a distinction between the gallows and pity, between deserved poverty and deserving poverty, which will operate throughout the following centuries through a process of orchestrated labeling by public authorities and other moral entrepreneurs. At the heart of this system which is both repressive and assistance, two devices will mark the XVII^e And XVIII^e centuries: the General Hospital created in 1656, and the begging depots created in 1764. Pursuing the same objective of re-education through work, these two attempts to normalize the world of wandering, like many others (deportation to the colonies, pain of galleys), will end in failure.

The impoverished masses of XIX^e century

If vagrancy has always found its origins in crises, particularly frumentary ones until half of the XIX^e century, thus forcing the rural poor to migrate in order to survive, the logic will be accentuated with the advent of industrial society and its repeated crises. Uncompensated, men’s unemployment leads them to take to the road: a wandering, destitute, male and most often elderly mass who, in an ambivalent way, still inspire compassion and charity, while remaining under the influence of repression. . The Napoleonic penal code in force since 1810 in fact establishes the presumption of guilt: without a home, without money and without a confession, the vagabond is a potentially guilty being. Prison for the able-bodied, the hospice for the old, the hospital for the sick or death on the road: these are the fates commonly observed in this world of wandering. We will have to wait for the creation of the first social insurance towards the end of the XIX^e century to glimpse other destinies based on emerging social protection, which will in fact contribute to reducing wandering poverty.

From tramp to tramp (1900-1970)

A sign of changing times, the wanderer of rural origin and peregrination becomes over time XX^e century — marked by increasing urbanization and a gradual decline in seasonal agricultural employment — the city tramp. If the wandering continues, it then tightens around a place, a city. Alongside these changes in vagrancy, the scale of the phenomenon also tends to decline throughout the first three quarters of the XX^e century. The country’s economic development and the gradual establishment of the social state explain this clear decline, particularly pronounced during the Trente Glorieuses. On the one hand, the labor market absorbs a whole part of the surplus among the able-bodied poor ; on the other, the State provides protection against a number of social risks which, until recently, justified wandering and begging (old age, disability, unemployment, etc.). Fewer in number, tramps are also better accepted, sometimes seen as an irreducible portion of poor misfits in a rich country, sometimes sublimated for the freedom they embody by escaping the constraints of capitalist and productivist society.

A resurgence of wandering poverty: Homeless

The last period covered by the author (from 1970 to the present day) is marked by a resurgence of wandering poverty. If the economic improvement of the previous period had made it possible to curb the phenomenon, the crisis of 1973 – which announced for the decades to come the rise in unemployment, poverty and job insecurity – augurs the emergence of a new category of poor, the Homelessdefined more by the absence of housing than by homelessness. Added to the effects of the economic crisis is the failure of a housing policy which, observed from Abbé Pierre’s Appeal in 1954 to the actions of children of Don Quixote in 2006, negatively demonstrates its inability to ensure one of the most basic rights: that of housing. Failing to eradicate this most visible poverty (observable in the street, the metro) and legally tolerated since the establishment of the new penal code of March 1994 which puts an end to the offense of begging, the public authorities today tend to take measures aimed at distancing Homeless for the sake of social hygiene (distance from city centers, shopping centers, etc.) and, therefore, to make invisible a phenomenon which remains no less real and worrying, thus justifying the increased intervention of private works in alongside state assistance measures (RMI, CMU).

An extension of Geremek’s work

This book, which explicitly follows the masterful work of Bronislaw Geremek (op. quote.), extends the reasoning by insisting in particular on the transfiguration of the figure of the marginal wanderer into an excluded and disaffiliated wanderer (p. 14-15), by broadening the object of wandering to backpackers, gypsies and other travelers and , above all, by offering the reader a dive into contemporary history. On this point, we may regret that the author places relatively little emphasis on some of the contemporary and particularly gendered figures of homelessness: if women remain a minority, representing between 15 and 20% of the homeless population, that what about their social trajectory and their condition of Homeless in a male-dominated world of wandering ? Another contribution of this work, which however calls for new developments: by linking the vagabond condition to a subculture derived from the dominant culture, the question of social domination is certainly raised, without being treated in a critical and political manner as the make Patrick Gaboriau and Daniel Terrolle more explicitly for whom the phenomenon Homeless and his “ impossible » eradication are only an expression of state violence. Going from confinement to relegation, the gallows in fact nowadays takes on the guise of a real and symbolic violence characteristic of new forms of social domination. These few remarks detract nothing from the interest and quality of this work which, in form and content, invites us above all to continue the crossing of points of view on this complex and disturbing question which represents gap of an irreducible fraction of the population in a supposedly united and egalitarian Republic, ranked fifth among the richest countries in the world.