ABSTRACT
This chapter draws on a research project in the UK which sought to establish the significance of homelessness in rural areas (Cloke et al., 2002). The project took as its underlying assumption that popular and political discourses of homelessness in the UK have largely been confined to the sites and sights of the city. After all, media focus on the problems of homelessness has been built around images and ideas relating to the on-street homeless people in major urban centres – the ‘beggars’ and ‘rough sleepers’ of London, Birmingham, Manchester, Bristol and so on. This public consciousness of homelessness in the city has been linked with highly publicized policy responses, such as the Rough Sleepers Initiative (see May et al., 2005), which have served to reinforce the links between homelessness and city spaces.
