Opening up the Welfare State to ‘Outsiders’

This chapter examines local/national trajectories of social movements for homeless people, arguing that ‘pro-homeless’ activism has fundamentally improved the Japanese welfare state. State-led high growth historically allocated resources favouring capitalist expansion, not people’s welfare. This tendency hit the homeless the most. In turn, this has given pro-homeless activism significant potentials and capacities. Firstly, pro-homeless activism has dominantly taken local forms, improving welfare provision at welfare offices. Secondly, in the late 2000s, activism won achievements at the national level, by reframing homelessness as a national problem. Thirdly, the wholesale inclusion of the homeless/poor has evoked their re-marginalization. Today, neoliberal/neoconservative forces are advancing anti-poor politics to revoke movements’ prior successes, paradoxically testifying to the power of pro-homeless activism in developing the welfare state.