Transitions Through Homelessness: Lives on the Edge PDF
Preview Transitions Through Homelessness: Lives on the Edge
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
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