Abstract
As the author observes in this book’s introduction, existing literature on youth homelessness typically comes either from an atheoretical, positivist, policy-oriented perspective, or a political economic perspective. These bodies of work treat homelessness either as an issue of service provision, or a dimension of wider material inequalities. In contrast, this contribution from Catherine Robinson aims to theorize youth homelessness as an embodied, affective experience, emphasizing the trauma of abuse, stigmatization and dislocation experienced by homeless youth. Robinson’s aim is to demonstrate that as well as a form of inequality, youth homelessness is an embodied experience and a form of suffering, which comes from the lack of a material and existential home. In exploring the embodied experience of youth homelessness, the book focuses on the relationship between embodied subjectivity and geography, tracing a connection between material placelessness and embodied suffering. With this theoretical framework, as well as qualitative data drawn from ethnographic work with young people experiencing homelessness, this book opens up new spaces for understanding the nature of youth homelessness as a space for identity construction.
One of the most interesting aspects of this book is the way that Robinson positions herself both epistemologically and in relation to her participants. The book begins not with a discussion of youth homelessness in Australia, but with a description of the author’s own trauma experienced through being with young people, who had themselves experienced violence, abuse and homelessness. The researcher’s own embodied experiences remain a significant aspect of the book, and provide a counterpoint to many of the young people’s narratives analysed throughout. Robinson argues for the status of her own researcher body as a source of knowledge about the embodied experiences of her participants, theorizing her own empathic relationship to them as an epistemological starting point for her own analysis. This is a risky move in a book like this, since it risks accusations of self-indulgence or epistemological naivety. However, in this case it has resulted in a deep and original analysis, which makes a significant contribution to existing literature on this issue. Through a ‘corporeographic’ perspective based on empathic, embodied relationships with her participants, Robinson provides some significant counter-narratives to the established bodies of positivist, medicalized knowledge, which dominate this field.
This is clearest in the chapter titled ‘Beside One’s Self’, which aims to analyse homelessness as the traumatic experience of placelessness. The chapter includes an autoethnographic exploration of the author’s own experience of a place that gave the embodied feeling of safety, personal history and authenticity – the feeling of home. Following from this, narratives from young people describe the trauma of lacking this place. Abuse from families that do not provide homes, as well as drug use and self-harm are situated as part of this trauma. The importance of home as a space where one can construct a meaningful identity is emphasized by the juxtaposition between the author’s own memories, and the narratives from young people experiencing homelessness. In contrast to the medicalized discourses, which usually frame these practices, drug use and self-harm become reflections of the trauma of dislocation, with the lack of a home appearing as a central element in creating this trauma. Robinson’s use of her own remembered embodied experiences leads to a theoretically rich and profound exploration of the relationship between space and embodied subjectivity for young people experiencing homelessness.
The book then addresses the issue of placelessness with an emphasis on young people’s active negotiation and construction of place. Robinson describes the way in which young people are excluded from supposedly public space, while lacking a private space of their own. She then describes the way that her participants found or created spaces, which approximated homes, and traces the embodied experiences of these places. While this section is interesting and reflects the central concerns of the book, it contributes less in terms of original theoretical or empirical material. Robinson’s analyses of place-making largely reflect previous literature, although the emphasis on the affective consequences of different spaces is an important addition to the field.
Finally Robinson discusses the way in which youth homelessness positions young people outside the boundaries of ‘normal’ society. She discusses stigmatization and the social disconnection of profound poverty symbolized by the inability to lend a cup of sugar to a neighbour. The social networks that young people become a part of while experiencing homelessness provide feelings of comfort and security against the sense of alienation that these young people experience. However, Robinson argues that becoming a part of these networks also contributes to young people’s disconnection from relationships that may help them getting off the street. Her analyses of social disconnection as a kind of affective trauma is effective here. Overall this chapter of the book demonstrates the way in which the placelessness of homelessness is also a disconnection from feelings of belonging and the capacity to construct an unstigmatized identity.
Overall this book is significant in two important ways. Methodologically, Robinson’s approach changes the relationship between researcher and researched in homelessness literature. While so much of the existing literature on youth homelessness treats young people as research objects or problems to be solved, Robinson’s emphasis on the epistemological significance of lived relationships and empathic experiences with her research participants removes the distinction between researcher and researched. Rather than becoming self indulgent, this position actually brings the experiences of her participants into sharp relief. Theoretically this book also brings concepts relating to embodiment and spatial processes into a more central position in existing homelessness research. The book concludes by calling for homelessness to become a topic of further theoretically informed research. This is an original piece of work, which should be taken seriously by anyone interested in moving the field of homelessness research into more sophisticated analyses of subjectivity and the role of geography in producing the affective experience of youth homelessness.