Summary 

The Housing (Wales) Act 2014, introduced amid rising homelessness inter- nationally, required Welsh local authorities to provide (nearly) all home- less and soon-to-be homeless applicants with timely, meaningful help. Prior to the Act, a minority considered particularly at risk from homeless- ness were afforded a globally near-unique right to state-provided housing. However, most received minimal help, generating increasing concern for their welfare. The Act also introduced a fundamental legislative shift in the state-citizen relationship, with provision of assistance becoming con- ditional upon the applicant’s ongoing co-operation. Further, the Act func- tions as part of the wider neoliberal paternalistic welfare state, embedding reliance upon Britain’s competitive, deregulated, private housing market. This thesis explores this shift to universal conditionality in a homeless- ness context, reporting upon interviews with 98 actors within the Welsh homelessness system, analysed using a Foucauldian lens. The central argument advanced is that, while homelessness relief in Wales now in- corporates many hallmarks of a classic workfare approach, conditionality itself is reluctantly and imperfectly enacted. This rests upon three central claims. First, the new Act relies upon the twin discourses of moralism and pragmatism, yet is complicated by care. Second, deployment of spa- tialised bureaucracy created spaces in which power is not only visibilised but, consequently, contested and negotiated. Third, the new Act must be understood within a broader context of citizen activation, in which home- less citizens are governed through a proposed failure to adopt a homo economicus subjectivity. This thesis demonstrates, therefore, the utility of a discourse-based approach to exploring modern systems of poverty governance, and particularly the importance of including frontline work- ers and applicants themselves in production and evaluation of legisla- tion. It further provides evidence of complex actor subjectivities: workers were found to be liminal, ambivalent and pragmatic, and often motivated by care, while applicants adeptly navigated repurposed narratives of de- servedness and abjectivity to advantage themselves in the system.