Logics of Interaction with Homeless People at Moscow Railway Stations

Abstract

Conversation about homelessness in the context of interactions in transportation or transit zones either boils down to alarmist claims that homeless people are actively using these spaces, interfering with the rest of the population, or to claims that homeless people are being wrongfully excluded and kicked out of train station and airport buildings. The former statements usually come from state actors, the latter from NGOs, charitable organizations and activists. Since transit zones inevitably become a point of attraction for homeless people, in this paper we are interested in what strategies exist for interacting with homeless people at train stations in Moscow, what are the actors in this interaction, and what logics guide these actors. The empirical material of the study is observations and express interviews in the buildings of Leningradsky and Yaroslavsky railway stations and in the station areas, which were conducted in the winter and summer of 2024. In the article we demonstrate several logics or patterns of interaction used by station employees and show that the dominant logic can be called the logic of distributed responsibility. Within this logic, decisions to exclude, ignore, or assist homeless people from stations depend on several factors: employees’ assessment of their level of responsibility for the situation, their personal characteristics, and the criteria by which they identify homeless people.