Nicole Fice, PhD

The Ethics of Homelessness

In 2024, I was awarded an internal research development grant from Trent University to undertake a new project on the ethics of homelessness.

Project Description: Homelessness is a social and public health issue that has received little attention from philosophers, despite being an issue in need of urgent addressing as rates of homelessness continue to rise in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the housing crisis. This project will make contributions to the small literature on homelessness in philosophy by engaging with some recent rebates on autonomy in this context. I argue that some accounts of autonomy given to date fail to properly respect the autonomy of homeless individuals. I suggest that feminist relational accounts of autonomy are a more promising conceptual tool for understanding the autonomy of homeless individuals.

I have several paper manuscripts based on this project at various stages of development. One manuscript, titled “Responding to Autonomy-Based Accounts of Homelessness”, is currently under review. Here is the abstract:

Several philosophical accounts of homelessness have emerged in recent years. These include care-based approaches and liberal approaches. Bart van Leeuwen (2018) has argued liberal approaches face what has been called the ‘minimalist charge’, which holds such accounts will fail to justify robust policy responses aimed at addressing homelessness. Katy Wells (2022) raises concerns with care-based approaches, arguing that they fail to respect the autonomy of people experiencing homelessness by assimilating them into a category of people with diminished or eliminated autonomy. To address the issues with care-based approaches, and to avoid the minimalist concern, Wells introduces her own autonomy-based approach. In this paper, I argue that Wells’s account is subject to the same worries she raises against care-based approaches: ultimately, it fails to properly respect the autonomy of people experiencing homelessness. Because Wells’s view is externalist in nature—meaning that it makes external conditions necessary for autonomy ascription—those who lack the required conditions will have diminished or eliminated autonomy. To support this claim, I draw on recent criticisms of some feminist relational accounts of autonomy. I introduce an alternative conception of autonomy that overcomes the theoretical problems with Wells’s account and offers some practical benefits.

Another aspect of this project has been to work with One City Peterborough, a local service provider to people experiencing homelessness and criminalization. I developed and facilitated a public seminar through One City’s community education programming titled “Homelessness and Choice: A Deep Dive into Autonomy”. Click here to view my slides for that seminar. My conversations with folks at One City and ones I’ve had during this seminar have been instrumental in shaping my thinking about issues related to homelessness, and I’m deeply grateful to One City and seminar participants for those conversations!

I plan to further develop this research program in the future.

Doctoral Research

My dissertation focuses on feminist philosophy, moral philosophy, and applied ethics. It is an integrated article thesis, meaning the chapters focus on discrete but related issues.

The first chapter of my dissertation focuses on privilege and attempts to provide general accounts of privilege in philosophical literature. My second chapter analyzes feminist relational theory and issues relating to how it addresses privilege. The third chapter focuses on vaccine hesitancy and early childhood vaccinations.

My paper manuscript on the topic of privilege and vaccine hesitancy, “Privilege and Parents’ Choice to Resist Pediatric Vaccines”, is currently under review. Here is the abstract:

In research on pediatric vaccine resistance, an interesting theme has emerged—that of the relative privilege of some parents who delay or refuse vaccines. However, privilege is not clearly defined. I point to accounts of privilege in feminist philosophy to fill this gap, but argue existing accounts are vague about what privilege confers. I offer some clarifications, namely that privilege confers both tangible resources and options to do certain things or be a certain way to dominant social groups. I return to the case of vaccine resistance to demonstrate the nature and value of this distinction in what privilege includes.

Policy Research: Time to Attach

From 2018 - 2019, I was a research assistant for the Time to Attach project, which calls for equal EI parental leave benefits for adoptive parents, kin, and customary caregivers in Canada. I was responsible for researching psychological literature on attachment theory.

I am a co-author on the Time to Attach report, completed for Adopt4Life: Ontario’s Adoptive Parent Association and the Adoption Council of Canada. The report calls for the creation of a 15-week “attachment leave” for parents and caregivers to support families grown through adoption, kinship, or customary care.

I attended meetings with federal MPs from every major political party in Ottawa in October 2018 and April-May 2019 to advocate for the policy changes suggested in the report above.

I also managed the website and social media accounts for the project, which included networking with community partners and the promotion of the survey portion of the report across social media platforms.

In 2023, MP Rosemarie Falk introduced a private member’s bill to amend the Employment Insurance Act and the Canada Labour Code (Bill C-318), which succeeded several readings in the House of Commons. The Federal Government officially implemented the change in Bill C-59 (see Division 12), which received Royal Assent in June 2024.