Roberta Piazza sets out to investigate the effects of lack of living space on the conceptualization of space-identity concerning mobile individuals via an analysis of data collected over several years from interviews with three categories of mobile groups—squatters, travellers, and the homeless. These groups are generally marginalized, poverty-stricken, and negatively covered in the media. Piazza's multifaceted approach, which effectively combines linguistic ethnography and the analytic tools of critical discourse analysis, is a valuable contribution to linguistic-ethnographic research. More importantly, her work lends a voice to her subjects who have long been deprived of being heard. The years of ethnographic work in the process represent a determined commitment to the underprivileged and a strong aspiration to make a difference.

Built on the presumption that space is discursively constructed and that any space is framed by political and social forces, the theoretical framework of the study focuses upon the literature of ‘space-identity’, ‘liminality’, ‘desire’, and ‘heterotopia’. Methodologically, Piazza explores how language features correlate with particular identities and why the data in this volume is reliable and pertinent. Through linguistic-ethnographic analysis, the individuality of these squatters, travellers, and homeless individuals, in relation to space, is effectively explored in this study.

The discussion of the space-identity of the subjects, who are commonly seen as threats or challenges to mainstream social norms, is principally based on interviewees’ transcripts and supplemented by media reports and surveys. Squatters construct their squat simultaneously as a real and aspirational place, ‘a heterotopia of both deviation and transgression as well as illusion’ (51). The travellers’ space-identity is explored by tracing a group of travellers who occupy a transient nomadic site before establishing a permanent living space sponsored by central government funding. When living their nomadic life, the travellers view their temporary site as a heterotopic space that can provide them with a safe space, whilst their desire for a lawful place is discursively shaped by their statements strengthening their ‘entitlement to the site’ (109) and their ‘complaint and recommendations to the authorities’ (112). Though moving to a permanent space impacts the travellers’ lives in various ways, the new site remains a heterotopia in nature. The homeless people discursively shape themselves as heroes, loners, or ‘self-confessed sinners’ (159).

The main contribution of this book, whose rigorous data was painstakingly collected over years of ethnographic work among liminal groups, is to uncover the space-identity constructed by the space-deprived individuals themselves. The methodology in this study again demonstrates that language is a cultural resource that carries social functions, and can reveal the language users’ experience, embedded attitudes, and view of the world. Although the results of this study cannot be generalized to all space-deprived individuals, they are still significant in exposing the space-identity shaped by the nominal individuals themselves when they are in an interaction with a compassionate interlocutor.