What is the Local/Global Connection

by Homeless Scholar

Homelessness is fundamentally the result of economic and social systems that do not provide adequate access to affordable housing, decent jobs, health care, and a social safety net. The most recent emergence of large-scale visible homelessness in the United States began in the late 1970s and early 1980s and continues onto today. During this very same time period, the United States underwent massive transformations in it's economy and government that involved long-standing declines in wages for workers, increasing poverty, decreases in the production of affordable housing, and the erosion of the welfare state and social safety net. Contemporary homelessness in the United States has in fact been caused by these social transformations and conditions. The visible homeless people who we see each day on the streets as individuals experiencing deeply personal challenges, live within these broader social contexts and the possibilities in their life are shaped by these broader contexts.

The economic and social transformations that have been shaping the United States over the last few decades, and which have resulted in the most current emergence of homelessness, are related to a global transformation of the way that governments throughout the world are responding to the social needs of their citizenry. This transformation is often referred to as "neoliberalism." Ideologically, neoliberalism draws upon the misguided claim that social programs and government bureaucracies are inherently inefficient, and that the best way for society to allocate it's resources is through unregulated free markets. The main role of the government then is not to provide for citizens, but to engage in penal and military activity, and to eliminate anything which may impede the "pure free market."

In the United States, this neoliberal transformation can be seen in the very transformations mentioned above which have caused homelessness in recent decades as well as in the way we have dismantled social and safety net programs, undercut economic regulations, increased prisons, and expanded military spending over the last two decades. The ascendancy of the neoliberal ideology in the United States is often associated with Ronald Regan, and it served as a counter to the Keynesian economic theories upon which New Deal and other social welfare programs had been based. Politically it is big business that has most pushed this transformation, and who have most profited from it. The result has been a tremendously large gap between rich and poor in the United States, along with growing poverty and homelessness. In the developing world, the neo-liberal transformation has been spurred largely by US dominated international financial agencies, such as the IMF, which have forced nations to cut back on social programs and economic regulations designed to protect the poor, in exchange for loans or foreign investment. Globally, the "neoliberal" transformation has also largely been pushed by big business -- that is by, giant multinational corporate interests, who have used structural adjustment, free trade, and other neo-liberal policies to insure international access to unregulated labor and product markets with low taxation rates. The result has been vast corporate profits, and the largest global gap between rich and poor in the history of the world.

In both the local and the global, neoliberal ideology and large corporate interests dominate. Of course, the irony of this combination of neoliberal ideology and large corporate domination is that despite neoliberalism's touting of free markets; "pure" free markets have not ever actually existed as large corporate interests constantly distort markets with the government's help to ensure their profit. Moreover, these business interests receive greater sums of corporate welfare from the US government than poor people do social welfare.

Understanding the way that neoliberal ideology and corporate domination connects the local and the global allows us to understand how local responses to homelessness in the United States fit within broader global trends. Just as global big business interests are pushing governments across the world to lessen regulations and social spending which protect the poor in their country, big business interests are pushing for policies in local communities throughout the United State which focus on social control and criminalization of homeless individuals, rather than on addressing structural causes of homelessness. Just as global neoliberalism justifies the destruction of social programs based on the ideological belief that government bureaucracy and social spending is inherently inefficient, big business in local areas in the United States often call for cutbacks in homeless programs, claiming they are an abysmally failing self-perpetuating bureaucracy. Finally, on both the local and the global level, those disproportionately harmed by these neoliberal policies are people of color – third world peoples throughout the globe and racial minorities within the United States.

Of course, the neo-liberal transformation itself is but the continuation of hundreds of years old historical legacies of European global conquest and global capitalist expansion. Global forces - and, in particular, European imperialism - have been shaping poverty and social marginalization in the Americas for many centuries. The historical legacy of racist European imperialism continues to play out today in the racial dynamics of homelessness in local US cities and in the vast overrepresentation of people of color amongst homeless people.

The way that global historical legacies of racist imperialism connect to today can be illustrated by the example of three communities of color in America: 1) natives, 2) blacks, and 3) latinos. First, the conquest of America by Europeans, including the genocide of the native inhabitants of this continent lead to displacement of thousands of communities. The historical legacy of this genocide continues to play out today in the hardships experienced by Native American communities and homeless Native Americans. Second, the global slave trade brought African slaves to America as totally dehumanized and abused people. The historical legacy of slavery continued to play out even after emancipation - first, through legal segregation - and now through the Urban Ghetto, the prison systems, the high rates of black homelessness, and the relative lack of wealth amongst black communities. Finally, US economic and military imperialism has destroyed the lives and economic prospects of millions of people in Latin America. As a result, many Latin Americans, and especially Mexicans, immigrate to the United States in search of a better life and economic opportunities. When they arrive these immigrants experience tremendous barriers from legal status issues, from anti-immigrant sentiment, from language, and from racism. Many end up deeply poor and homeless. Again, we see here a historical legacy of global imperialism shaping poverty in local US communities.

Historically, European imperialism was deeply tied to the expansion of global capitalism. And it is in this tie that we can find the connection between global historical legacies of European imperialism and the modern day neoliberial transformation. Neoliberalism is the newest pinnacle of global capitalist expansion; and as such it is the historical heir of racist European imperialism. Global capitalism over the last four hundred years, forcibly spread across the world by European imperialism, has functioned fundamentally as a system of domination, oppression, exploitation, and suffering, which appropriates the labor power and wealth of the masses and the resources of the Earth and concentrates those riches in the hands of a very few capitalists. Neoliberalism is the newest expression of this system; and homelessness in our local communities is a direct result of it.

While there is much talk these days of “globalization,” globalization per se is not a new phenomenon. It is true that there is a new rapidity with which information, goods, and people can travel across the globe; there is a new instantaneousness of global communication; and there is their are new legal forms of the multinational corporations which capitalists may utilize in their quests for global profit. But this new global ability to move and talk across great distances is itself a reproduction of systems of injustice which have plagued Earth since the beginning of capitalism and European colonialism. Homelessness is one of the many negative effects and painful results of these global systems of injustice and destruction.

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