Theories of homelessness

Several research studies undertaken by the CUHP teams provide substantive findings and research hypotheses of importance to other researchers in Europe and internationally.

These include research findings and hypotheses on:

• social capital and homelessness (France), and social exclusion, unemployment and homelessness (France, UK, Denmark),
  
• the relationship between the use of substances (drugs, alcohol) and mental ill-health among different homeless populations (Spain, and a French survey made by French psychiatrists using INED’s sample methodology)
  
• Risk analysis and the risk of homelessness among young people (UK, France, Spain).
  
• Gender dimensions of different homeless populations (France, UK, Italy)
  
• Long-term homelessness (Spain, Netherlands, Denmark) and on the evaluation over time of policy measures (Spain)
  
• The life of homeless people and their own means of survival (Netherlands, UK, Italy).
  
• The vulnerably housed populations (Hungary, France,)
  
• Migrant homelessness, including those from Eastern Europe and including the Roma homeless (Italy, France, Denmark)
  
• The balance between individual risk factors and structural factors? (Fr, Spain)

The research teams involved in CUHP have identified a series of scenarios which have led to individual European citizens becoming the most excluded of all European citizens:

• Family breakdown or absence of a family network due to death or migration,
  
• Unemployment, changes in the job market, no possibility of legal work for some migrants,
  
• Changes in the housing market and/or the price of housing,
  
• Changes in benefit rights, or access to particular services,
  
• Substance abuse, mental disorders, physical disorders.
  
• Etc.

Several causes may be associated with the same person. All these scenarios require different types of policies and intervention through both government welfare strategies and non-government agencies.

Similarly, differences in structural factors may require different patterns of intervention given the different availability of social housing in different countries, and differences in unemployment rates and family disruption rates. Therefore CUHP also seeks to explore, through the combined knowledge of its teams, the core values of the ’European Social Model’ in relation to homelessness among European citizens.

Research teams in France, the UK, Spain and Italy have also made particular studies of the gender differences amongst homeless populations.

Contact us to provide information on hypotheses being tested by yourself or papers on theories of homelessness. Click here

Theory papers submitted by network members

The London and Milan workshops began the work of drawing together different European perspectives or theories on homelessness. In London three papers were presented on different theories that members had used in the study of homelessness.

Antonio Tosi and Rossana Torri’s paper discussed theories of marginalisation and immiseration in relation to homelessness.

- ‘Marginalisation as a process and the biographical approach’ by Antonio Tosi and Rossana Torri, IT.

Joan Smith’s paper discussed theories of social exclusion in relation to homelessness, and the relation of this theory to concepts of risk, social capital, and moral order.

- Risk, Exclusion, Moral Order and Social Capital – a first theorising of youth homelessness by Joan Smith, UK

Lia van Doorn’s paper introduces her understanding of the shock experienced by the newly homeless when they find themselves on the street, linking it to Goffman.

- ‘The newly homeless and the first days on the street’ by Lia van Doorn, Netherlands.

Jean-Marie Firdion develops an approached based on the Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of ’social capital’

- A "capital" and "social field" approach, by Jean-Marie Firdion (Ined)