Utilizing innovative ethnographic research, Swept Up Lives? challenges conventional accounts of urban homelessness to trace the complex and varied attempts to care for homeless people Presents innovative ethnographic research which suggests an important shift in perspective in the analysis and understanding of urban homelessness Emphasizes the ethical and emotional geographies of care embodied and performed within homeless services spaces Suggests that different homelessness ‘scenes’ develop in different places due to varied historical, political, and cultural responses to the problems faced