You Start with the Youth: Systemic Critique at a Homeless Service Organization

• In Event: 230 - Regular Session. Homelessness

Abstract

Abstract: Using ethnographic observation, in-depth interviews, and analysis of homeless youth art and writing, I investigate the prevalence of structural explanations of poverty among transition-age homeless youth at a large homeless youth service organization. I find that narratives of “youth” facilitate structural explanations of poverty and inequality among homeless participants. As staff members emphasize the positive characteristics of youth to challenge anti-homeless stigma, homeless youth leverage the organization's official discourse to advance more radical critiques of the systems that oppress them. This finding calls into question conventional scholarly wisdom about the hegemony of pathologizing ideologies and practices in homeless shelters, and sheds light on how discursive resources can disrupt the medicalization of homelessness in shelters.

Author

• Dilara Yarbrough, University of California-San Diego