“If I get an ID card then maybe I might be able to find a job and move forward…” Barriers to exiting homelessness in Croatia

Year 2024, Volume: 44 Issue: 2, 395 - 418, 31.12.2024

Lynette šikić-mićanović Paula Greiner

Abstract

One of the main aims of this study was to generate in-depth understanding of the barriers that younger people face in their attempts to exit homelessness. The housing pathways approach is used to examine how experiences of homelessness are intersected by overlapping structural, socio-cultural, and individual dynamics that shape individual biographies across time. Using a structural violence framework, the methodical and often subtle processes through which social structures disadvantage and harm certain groups of people is explained. Research participants in this study included younger people experiencing homelessness and practitioners involved in the homelessness services. This qualitative, longitudinal study uses a combination of methods such as participant observation, fieldnotes, reflexivity, biographical interviews and walk-along interviews. Triangulation of all these methods identified three different barriers to exiting homelessness: i) structural; ii) sociocultural contexts; and iii) intrapersonal. This article draws on interview quotes to illustrate the nature of these obstacles that manifest as social exclusion. It also relies on knowledge gained from long-term fieldwork that increased nuanced understandings of these dynamics and challenging processes that considerably constrain agency. It is hoped that this study will provide knowledge input for national policies, strategies and prevention programs to tackle vulnerabilities among excluded people experiencing homelessness.

Keywords

Barriers , Homelessness exits , Social exclusion , Structural violence , Constrained agency

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