‘Without an address, you do not exist’: the administrative invisibility of people experiencing homelessness in Belgium

ABSTRACT

Population registries have become essential instruments in the expansion of welfare states to determine a person’s eligibility for social rights and benefits. To (temporarily) register people without a residential address, Belgium introduced an alternative registration system: the ‘reference address’. By using data from interviews with 80 experts from two research projects, we focus on the reference address and the implications of registration and de-registration for administratively disadvantaged people. More specifically, we shed light on the importance of civil registration and the link with citizenship for people experiencing homelessness. Building on the concepts of domicile-based and local citizenship, we argue it disproportionately hampers the access to rights for people experiencing homelessness and creates an ‘invisible crisis’ in Belgium.

KEYWORDS:

• Homelessness
• citizenship
• civil registration
• social rights
• administrative invisibility
• administrative exclusion

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. ‘Radiation’ in French or ‘ambtshalve afvoering’ in Dutch.

2. OCMW (Openbaar Centrum voor Maatschappelijk Welzijn) in Dutch, CPAS (Centre Publics d’Action Sociale) in French.

3. An important side note is that detainees or prisoners are also eligible for a reference address at the PCSW. In certain municipalities (e.g. Antwerp and Brussels), a reference address for mobile population groups such as caravan dwellers is provided. This third type of reference address lies beyond the scope of this article.

Additional information

Funding

Laure-lise Robben and Koen Hermans are connected to the research project “TRAHOME: Homelessness trajectories and non-take-up of social rights from a dynamic perspective”. Adèle Pierre is involved in the research project “MEASINB: Measuring Invisibility in Brussels”. This work was supported by the Belgian Research Action through Interdisciplinary Networks (BRAIN-be) of the Federal Public Planning Service Science Policy (Belspo) under Grant B2/191/P3/TRAHOME and supported by the Brussels Institute for Scientific Research (Innoviris).