Homelessness at the dining table :|needs-talk in the Hayata Sarıl Restaurant

Abstract

This thesis is based on a year of ethnographic research in the Hayata Sarıl Restaurant which is a soup kitchen serving free food for the homeless in Istanbul. It scrutinizes how, from what perspective, and for what aim the needs of the homeless are interpreted by the volunteers working there. ‘Needs-talk’, conceptualized by Nancy Fraser, refers to the ways needs are interpreted and it is an institutionalized part of the political discourse in welfare states (1989). This thesis indicates that for the Hayata Sarıl, homelessness is a process starting as a familial and social exclusion. It is deepened as a psychological problem through traumas. Then, it results in a lifestyle where finding a socially meaningful job does not matter to the homeless anymore. Accordingly, homeless people are considered in need for sociality, psychological support, and discipline the most. The state is responsible for creating concrete, human rights-based solutions, society is responsible for socially including the homeless, and the homeless are responsible for giving efforts to be housed again. This needs-talk aims for the homeless to change and become citizens who can exercise their rights. The study also shows that volunteers use victim-blaming and structure-blaming discourses of homelessness at the same time, which indicates that these discourses may well coexist. The thesis concludes that having more homeless people in the positions of volunteerism or jobs can help the relationship between ‘housed’ volunteers and homeless diners to be stronger and also the homeless to politicize their unspoken needs claims.