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Reimagining subjectivities in place: Necropolitical logics of safer supply and housing in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside

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  • Fleming, Taylor
  • Boyd, Jade
  • McNeil, Ryan

Abstract

Canada's overdose crisis has prompted the implementation of a range of safer supply programs, which provide prescription alternatives to illicit drugs to reduce overdose deaths and related harms. However, the effectiveness and transformative potential of these programs are shaped by the broader socio-spatial contexts in which they are implemented, particularly in marginalized housing environments like single room occupancy (SRO) buildings in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. Through qualitative interviews with 26 people receiving safer supply undertaken from October 2022 to July 2023 in Vancouver, Canada's Downtown Eastside—one of the epicentres of Canada's overdose crisis and the location of most of the country's safer supply programming—this paper examines what subjectivities safer supply makes possible for people who use drugs within the context of SRO housing. Drawing on two participant narratives, we explore how broader social-structural forces frame how safer supply can act when implemented in housing environments that engender subjectivities anchored in, for example, precarious health, social suffering, and normalized dehumanization. Drawing on the concept of necropolitics, we examine how experiences of place shape unfolding subjectivities among people who use drugs living in SROs who are receiving safer supply. We consider how the normalization and legitimization of social suffering as a condition of living in SRO housing is emblematic of how people who use drugs are made to inhabit necrospace. In doing so, we situate safer supply—and its life-sustaining potential—within the context of a life-constraining space.

Suggested Citation

  • Fleming, Taylor & Boyd, Jade & McNeil, Ryan, 2025. "Reimagining subjectivities in place: Necropolitical logics of safer supply and housing in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 372(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:372:y:2025:i:c:s027795362500259x
    DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2025.117930
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Mayer, Samara & Jenkins, Emily & Fairbairn, Nadia & Fowler, Al & McNeil, Ryan, 2024. "“I'm just searching to get better”: Constructions of treatment citizenship on injectable opioid agonist treatment," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 348(C).
    2. McNeil, Ryan & Kerr, Thomas & Anderson, Solanna & Maher, Lisa & Keewatin, Chereece & Milloy, M.J. & Wood, Evan & Small, Will, 2015. "Negotiating structural vulnerability following regulatory changes to a provincial methadone program in vancouver, canada: A qualitative study," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 168-176.
    3. Lazarus, L. & Chettiar, J. & Deering, K. & Nabess, R. & Shannon, K., 2011. "Risky health environments: Women sex workers’ struggles to find safe, secure and non-exploitative housing in Canada’s poorest postal code," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 73(11), pages 1600-1607.
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