What Makes a Dignified Urban Life?: Perspectives from the State, Civil Society, and the Street Dwellers

This paper synthesizes two connected street dweller studies in Metro Manila. The first was a survey of policies and programs of state and civil society groups relating to street dwellers. The second was a series of dialogues with street dwellers, partly tackling the findings on policies and programs from the first study.

The idea of what constitutes a dignified urban life for street dwellers has been contested mainly by state and civil society actors. Street dwellers are subject to hostile actions from state agencies, from periodic displacement from staying places, street surveillance, to their non-recognition as citizens leading to their exclusion from services. But they are also the target beneficiaries of predominantly social welfare programs at the national and local levels of government. On the other side, civil society groups have focused on feeding programs, rehabilitative efforts, and advocacy work to protect dwellers from state violence.

These interventions have been mostly framed through varying formulations of rights and or/dignity. In the process, they have provided divergent yet sometimes convergent understandings of what constitutes a dignified urban life for street dwellers. This paper outlines what these actors emphasize as necessary in achieving this, as well as lays out points of convergences and lines of debate as seen in their policies and programming.

As a consequence of being the primary actors that serve and define who the street dwellers are, the state and the civil society groups have dominated this conversation. Street dwellers have been relegated as the subjects of policies and talks. This prompts the questions: What do street dwellers think about their condition? And what makes a dignified life for them? This paper synthesizes the insights from dialogues with street dwellers, in an attempt to (re-)introduce their perspectives in the discourse regarding their own lives and dignity.