Transitions Through Homelessness: Lives on the Edge

206 Pages·2008·0.69 MB·English

by  Carol McNaughton (auth.)

Transitions Through
Homelessness
Lives on the Edge
Carol McNaughton
Transitions Through Homelessness
This page intentionally left blank
Transitions Through
Homelessness
Lives on the Edge
Carol McNaughton
University of York, UK
© Carol McNaughton 2008
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2008 978-0-230-20162-0
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
publication may be made without written permission.
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted
save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence
permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90
Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP.
Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author
of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
First published 2008 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010
Companies and representatives throughout the world
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave
Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd.
Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom
and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European
Union and other countries.
ISBN 978-1-349-29982-9 ISBN 978-0-230-22734-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230227347
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully
managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing
processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the
country of origin.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08
Contents
Acknowledgements vi
Glossary vii
Introduction 1
1 In the Absence of Home: Understanding Homelessness 3
2 Emotional and Material Landscapes of Life 33
3 Becoming a Homeless Person 55
4 Being a Homeless Person 87
5 Homelessness, Social Welfare and ‘Targeted Populations’ 110
6 Homelessness, Identity and Social Networks 139
7 Conclusion: Lives on the Edge 168
Appendix 185
References 186
Index 194
v
Acknowledgements
Thanks go to all the people who assisted in the research and development
of this book, including: the people who allowed their lives to be studied,
of course; the agency that assisted with the research and without whom
it would not have been possible; the many academic influences that I
have been lucky to have over the years, and especially, to the memory of
Robina Goodlad.
On a personal note, this is for those with the keys to my home:
my family, friends and TL.
With thanks.
w.
vi
Glossary
Divestment passages: Occur when transitional events (such as going to prison)
lead to what is perceived to be a failure or the wrong outcome. They may lead
to a separation from status or rupturing of narrative identity.
Edgework: Actions and events that involve negotiating at the edge of normative
behaviour. In this analysis this applies to voluntary and non-voluntary risks
that require people to negotiate difficult circumstances and may involve a
rupturing of, or escape from, material reality. These acts can involve drug use,
violence, or suicide attempts. Going over the edge (such as becoming an
addict, committing suicide) occurs when these risky actions are not managed.
Emplotment: Through a process of ‘emplotment’, actual ‘events’ that occur, and
how people present them and make sense of them, as part of their ‘story’ of
life, become interwoven subconsciously by them, over time. This creates a
narrative identity.
Integrative passages: Transitional stages that maintain an individual’s integration
to society over their life course. They adhere to the norms of society, such as
moving from parental home to student accommodation.
Material reality: The actual ‘here and now’ of time and space that people exper-
ience in the circumstances they are in. For example this may be constituted
by the actual room in a hostel someone is in, the sounds, people and smells
there, the street and city there.
Narrative identity: Through emplotment people can maintain a sense of narrative
identity over time – they are the ‘same’ person today as yesterday, the same
person as ten years ago, however much their external circumstances change. By
constructing a cohesive internal narrative of the different events that have
occurred in their life, they can maintain ontological security and a sense of iden-
tity, despite changes in the context this occurs in.
Rationale of irrational behaviour: Actions that can be understood as rational when
the motivations for them and the material reality they occur within are taken
into account. They may not appear rational to avoid risk but can be viewed as
rational from within the micro-level context they occur within.
Resources: Collectively, resources here refer to the different forms of human,
social, cultural, material, or economic capital that people have access to.
Social welfare system: Collectively the services (voluntary and statutory) that are
funded through a broad government framework to provide assistance to people,
and other resources (such as Benefits) from the state, often in a non-direct way.
Stressed perspective on homelessness and causation: (The term is an amalgamation
of structuration, realism, and edgework). Asserts that it is the resources that
people have that provide a buffer to outcomes such as homelessness occurring in
vii
viii Glossary
their lives, despite the same acts of edgework occurring (drug use, for example).
With these resources they can generate resilience to manage the stress of life,
and engage in edgework effectively. It is not this edgework that is the cause of
homelessness, but the inability to manage it, due to the context it occurs within
and resources individuals have.
Targeted populations: Groups that are particularly conceptualised as being in
need of support or interventions from agencies funded as part of the welfare
system to assist them resolve the problems they represent. This includes the
homeless, unemployed, and addicts.
Introduction
The homeless person is an evocative social character of late modernity.
Homelessness encapsulates many things: destitution, displacement, pov-
erty, criminality, fear, pity, crisis, anomie, (Fooks & Pantazis, 1999; Somer-
ville, 1992). The homeless are archetypal ‘outsiders’, and, even in a
modern world that apparently celebrates plurality and difference, it
remains that ‘homelessness is distinguished by a lack of social status, invisibil-
ity, as a ‘problem’ to others, with the homeless being seen as outcast and rejected,
at the bottom of the social scale, disreputable and nicheless’ (Somerville,
1992:532). Homelessness is a social problem that has been a key focus of
recent policy developments and of ‘targeting’ by the state (Dean, 1999),
particularly in the UK. This indicates the strong currency that homeless-
ness has as a discursively understood phenomenon (Anderson, 2004; May,
Cloke & Johnsen, 2005). There has been much research and debate into
homelessness in recent years (for example, Anderson, Kemp & Quilgars,
1993; Kennett & Marsh, 1999; Jacobs, Kemeny & Manzi, 1999; Fitzpatrick,
Kemp & Klinker, 2000) and sophisticated development of knowledge
about why homelessness occurs and how it can be understood. How-
ever there has been little exploration of transitions through homelessness,
over time, with a focus on the experiences of the individuals making these
transitions that ties them to broader theoretical frameworks.
This book begins to address this and presents a perspective on homeless-
ness in late modernity, developed using biographical case studies narrated
by twenty-eight people who were or had recently been homeless. What hap-
pened to them as they made transitions through homelessness for a year
was then explored in a series of in-depth interviews conducted with each.
Far-reaching changes have taken place in the social and political con-
text that these individuals operate within over recent years, on a global
scale. Technological developments, the overarching success of global cap-
italism, changing welfare states, ecological crisis, new patterns of family
life, relationships, employment, markets, mass migration, transnationality,
and the emergence of ‘new’ national terrorist threats, encapsulate these
changes. These are themselves recognised as being the (sometimes
unintended) consequences of the process of modernity. This is a time of
late, reflexive, modernity (Beck, 1992; 1999), distinct, but following on
from, first modernity, as the structures of full employment, the nuclear
1