ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how newly homeless people negotiate the hostile climate of public space, to seek out protective immunological bubbles in which they can exist in relative safety. P. Sloterdijk argues that all bubbles that they create as spaces of intimacy and interiority 'work towards bursting'. The bubbles of safety are created through drawing on past relationships and institutions, but can be seen as performing the same function, of creating interiority within the skinless world of homeless living; they here immunise their personal microclimates against the hostility of public space. The chapter focuses on some of the participants, who described a crisis of containment, a need to escape or overflow. The participant, who lay down outside their mental health service, spent only one night sleeping rough. Homelessness is an increasing problem in the UK, which intersects in multiple ways with experiences of mental distress.
