Crime, Poverty and Resistance on Skid Row

Abstract

This final chapter takes as its starting point the need to uncover the counter-narratives, the hidden histories of the people labelled as deviants and criminals in inner-city neighbourhoods. In doing so, the chapter draws upon community arts-based research conducted by O’Neill and Stenning (2011) in downtown eastside Vancouver (skid row) where ‘community’ is documented through the eyes of the inhabitants — the binners, sex workers, street vendors and artists struggling to make out in circumstances not of their choosing¹. One dominant theme in the research — the struggle for recognition — emerges against depictions that categorise and record residents as abject, ‘other’ and ‘different’.