AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDY OF REPEATED HOMELESSNESS IN OXFORD
This is a study about the spatial and temporal routines of rough sleepers in Oxford, whose homelessness persisted and was repeated, and how these routines intersected with their social worlds. Participant observation undertaken over three years provides new insights into the practices rough sleepers were engaged in whilst living on the streets. These practices were related, on the one hand, to processes of creating meaning and order for individual rough sleepers, and on the other hand, to social constructions and discourses applied to the entire homelessness category, and to those in particular whose homelessness took place on the streets. The lack of narrative coherence rough sleepers experienced when they became homeless led them to undertake activities that compounded the physical and emotional problems they already experienced as a result of their precarious livelihood. Participant observation enabled the researcher to examine the way personal and public practices were connected through rough sleepers' identities, manifest in the uses they made of public discourses about them. Whilst the patterns that created the recurring nature of their homelessness are analysed here, the argument is also made that repeatedly crossing between various forms of accommodation reflected a pattern of impermanence that became taken for granted by rough sleepers. This impermanence was created by both rough sleepers and non-homeless individuals and parties whose encounters with each other often resulted in rough sleepers moving on. The variety of institutional and non-institutional settings many rough sleepers passed through lay at the heart of their impermanence and reflected difficulties they had with cycles of health, intoxication and in their social relationships. It is recommended that the skills rough sleepers developed to deal with the difficult conditions of living without shelter and, as a consequence of their low social status, without entitlement to shelter, should be emphasised and applauded.
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations