ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates that the outer limits of the right's scope of meaning and application revolve around the axes of dignity and responsibility, which are both understood in socially embedded, context-dependent ways, and which simultaneously expand and restrain the right's boundaries. It explores how socio-economic deprivation, in which the applicant plays an active role, might be argued to entail a violation of the right not to be subjected to degrading treatment. The chapter argues that an interpretation of the term 'treatment', on the basis of its manifestation in Article 3 case-law as a social experience. The focus of the degrading treatment claim in O'Rourke was the 'applicant's suffering following his eviction' from temporary accommodation; on the experience of being without accommodation. A link between rough sleeping and degrading treatment emerges from an understanding of rough sleeping as a set of living conditions characterized by socially symbolic dynamics of exclusion.
