NICHOLAS HONG XU LIANG

M.Soc.Sci Student

Research Title: Provincialising Compassionate Revanchism: Examining Homelessness Governance Through State-Society Collaborations in Singapore
Research Group: Politics, Economies And Space (PEAS)
Thesis Advisor: Dr Shaun Teo

I am broadly interested in issues surrounding urban inequalities. This includes lived experiences of urban poverty, homelessness, and migrant precarity, alongside interventions that seek to foster more progressive outcomes for those living at the urban margins.

My research focuses on state-society collaborations addressing homelessness in Singapore. Within homelessness governance in Singapore, the Partners Engaging and Empowering Rough Sleepers (PEERS) network embodies the country’s ‘Many Helping Hands (MHH)’ approach towards social welfare, whereby the state oversees a collaborative network of community organisations and partners.

My research examines community-led initiatives within PEERS, examining how configurations of state and community actors create, organise, and sustain outreach and shelter initiatives for the homeless. I do so through the lens of compassionate revanchism, drawing attention to how ostensibly ‘compassionate’ initiatives for the homeless are inextricably intertwined with revanchist pressures leading to complex and ambivalent outcomes. Moreover, I wish to foreground how such community projects may also serve as sites where alternative, more progressive forms of homelessness governance may be fostered and promulgated.