Covid and homelessness. Sociological survey on the institutional and ethical commitment of the action of medico-social workers with the homeless in the context of the epidemic. – COVABRI

Our proposal is the continuation of a collaborative sociological investigation initiated during the confinement and deconfinement with social and health workers of the social emergency in Saint-Etienne, and thus falls within the general theme "Social and economic dynamics, ethical stakes" of the call for projects. This first research work consisted in documenting as precisely as possible their actions as well as the reorganizations of the assistance system dedicated to the homeless, understood in the extensive sense of the term: people sleeping rough and/or dependent on the shelter and precarious housing system. It has made it possible to bring to light specificities hitherto perceived as non-problematic in the care provided and to highlight the different ways of managing this obvious paradox: both confinement and deconfinement cannot be applied when there is no "home"; it's also problematic when the place of living is a collective shelter, institutional or not, precarious or unsustainable. Following this initial collection of data and analyses, the proposed research programme aims more broadly to document and analyse the adjustments in public action in health crisis situations and its consequences for those who implement it on the one hand and, on the other, for those who are the beneficiaries.
How do the associative sector and public authorities work together in this crisis context? In what way is the crisis transforming the institutional relations traditionally situated between cooperation, competition and resistance? In what way do the ethics of action and the consideration of the dignity of persons guide their action? A first line of research questions the metamorphosis of institutional work in the context of a pandemic. At the same time, it is about analyzing the more subterranean part of the professions of social-health support and their dynamics of action in order to observe how, in a crisis situation, the ethics of action leads to reconfiguring professional practices, the meaning of work and the forms of associative commitment. Finally, as a complement to this second axis, it is the direct consequences of action on the homeless, whose vulnerability is redoubled, that remains to be investigated: to what extent does institutional commitment influence precarious housing conditions and the non-use of rights? In what way do the responses provided reproduce or, on the contrary, reconfigure the action logics underlying the institutional pathways to shelter and housing? To what extent do the new health and social rules within the institutions themselves reconcile the government's conduct and consideration of social and human rights?
The collaborative, qualitative and comparative survey approach (between the situations and institutions surveyed) will be deployed in situ in order to continue face-to-face interviews with professionals, volunteers and homeless people, to conduct observations and to mobilize a participatory and interventional methodology with all stakeholders. This final phase aims to encourage a plurality of points of view about lived situations on the one hand and, on the other hand, to support reflexivity on the ethics of action as well as the transformations of the systems dedicated to the homeless.