Digital disparities beyond the stably housed: Researching global homelessness and mobile media

Introduction

As the study of mobile media and communication matures, a key area of growth is to explore the experiences of people and communities living on the peripheries of social and economic power. Much of our foundational understanding of mobile communication in society arose from studying middle-class communities making sense of technological change in the Global North (see e.g. Fortunati, 2002; Goggin & Hjorth, 2014; Ling, 2004; Ling & Yttri, 2002). The home often played a significant role in these foundational explorations, as a location from which parents and professionals were freed from the tyranny of the landline, while in the process becoming tethered to new expectations of roles and contact across everyday life (Brown et al., 2002; Licoppe, 2004; Ling & Yttri, 2002). In this special issue, we ask what happens when the stability of the “home” is pulled out from under our assumptions of mobile media and communication. The studies gathered here explore homelessness as a diverse set of conditions and experiences and examine its implications in connection with mobile media through case studies across the globe.

Mobility has a special relation to homelessness and, in turn, to media that is mobile. On the one hand, not having a permanent address or abode to return to generates transience and displacement: homelessness means being on the move outside of one's control. Mobility can be experienced as a resource—the ability to find the things needed to survive and access services. On the other hand, mobility may be a luxury that is out of reach for some. Homelessness can produce stasis and immobility, associated with poverty, stigma, and inhibitions on movement (Jackson, 2015; Kaufman, 2022).

Into this context, mobile media enters as both a resource and a liability for the unhoused in contexts around the globe. Mobile media, a critical subset of digital technologies, offers unparalleled accessibility and connectivity for those without stable housing. Its portability and personal nature make it a vital tool for survival, enabling access to essential services, social networks, and resources (Humphry, 2014, 2022). At the same time, the reliance on a mobile device becomes a burden, requiring tactics to sustain mobile devices and connections while lacking stable shelter (Galperin et al., 2021; Humphry, 2014, 2022; Marler, 2019). Tackling this combination of mobility, media, and homelessness, this special issue asks: What kind of opportunity is a mobile device for those who are unstably housed? How do different experiences and drivers of homelessness interact with the possibilities of mobile media? What are communities and institutions doing to provide assistance to those at risk of, or experiencing, homelessness through mobile technologies?

In order to bridge foundational mobile scholarship with the concerns of housing-based exclusions, the focus of this special issue draws heavily on perspectives emerging from the Global South. Studies from India, Ghana, Brazil, Jamaica and elsewhere have shown us that mobile practices are much more diverse than what could be captured in any single social or economic geography (Donner, 2015; Goggin, 2010; Horst & Miller, 2005; Ling & Horst, 2011). Indeed, the impact of mobile media depends very much on the contexts and resources available to people who take it up. We draw on this ongoing thread of Global South scholarship (e.g. Krishnan & Cravero, 2017; Togar et al., 2023) to understand how homelessness across the globe shapes how people make sense of and use mobile media and, in turn, what impact it has on their lives.

The articles gathered here draw attention to homelessness as a set of diverse experiences with significant consequences for well-being and unique connections to mobile media. The authors challenge the taken-for-granted focus on the stably housed by studying those without the same privilege. We take an international perspective on contemporary homelessness to foreground its global existence and diverse expressions across a range of national contexts, and to challenge the predominant focus on North America and Western Europe in existing literature.

Homelessness and mobile media use: First insights

If the study of people experiencing homelessness can shift our perspective on the study of mobile media, to what extent does the mobile media lens add to our understanding of the lives of people experiencing homelessness? While academic interest in this particular intersection has been growing, as evidenced by the substantial contributions in this issue, mobile media usage is easily dismissed by critics as a tangential concern in the context of homelessness, given amidst the myriad material, social, and psychological challenges faced by many experiencing homelessness. However, we propose that mobile media use in the context of homelessness is an extremely important topic for several reasons. First of all, it is a widespread empirical reality. Many people who are homeless (in different parts of the world) frequently use mobile media. It is an aspect of their everyday life just as much (or even more) as it is part of everyday life for the housed population. But we do not know enough about the potential specificities in the use of mobile media by people who are homeless or living otherwise precarious lives, about the challenges they face, the solutions they develop, and also simply who “they” are. Secondly—and again this is similar to the general population—mobile media offers ways to connect, to locate, to shop, to entertain, and many other social, economic, political, or cultural activities as a necessary feature of daily life and social participation. Again, both opportunities and challenges are similar but also different to those of the housed population. And while the problem of homelessness as such will not be solved via digital technologies (Bure, 2005), these technologies are playing a key role in people's well-being and can form part of social service provisions aimed at improving their quality of life. All the while, the challenges to obtaining and maintaining stable access to a continuously working digital environment, however, remain significant, while the pressure to “be online” is increasing (e.g. through digital welfare provision).

While much early research on homelessness and mobile communication originated in the United States with a focus on health issues (e.g. Calvo et al., 2019; Rice & Barman-Adhikari, 2014), in recent years, this scholarship has begun to spread, in terms of both focus and geographical reach (Hartmann, 2018; Humphry, 2014, 2022; Marler, 2023). This special issue builds on these beginnings and expands the field further conceptually and methodologically through making new disciplinary connections. The contributions stem from intersecting fields of research such as studies of media, mobilities, migration, inequalities, health, disability, and development, partly challenging established representations of homelessness (Speer, 2021). Mobile and digital media are at once tools of survival for many who are unstably housed as well as avenues for entertainment, community building, and self-expression (FEANSTA, 2021; Marler, 2023). Digital and mobile media can also function as multipliers of inequality. Indeed, insufficient digital access, skills, and motivation put people at an increased risk of falling behind in the social and economic sphere. Technologies of the state—from algorithmic decision making in welfare and policing to urban surveillance regimes—may be levied against those who are unstably housed or simply “on the move.” In some countries, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, access to a smartphone, and consequently ways to keep it charged and functioning (as well as to keep it per se), became vital, with a lack of a smartphone giving rise to potentially new types of exclusion such as around healthcare and physical mobility (see e.g. Parsell et al., 2023). The research presented here begins to open up questions about how the conditions of homelessness interact with the promise and liabilities of mobile media in these and other contexts.

The special issue therefore addresses the implications of homelessness—in its myriad forms—for our understanding of mobile media and communication. Homelessness and housing exclusion, of course, are not monolithic categories, and they may entail different meanings and experiences across different geographical, cultural, and historical contexts, from the “van life” of modern nomads in the United States (Smith & Davis, 2020; see also Montague in this special issue), to rough-sleepers in southeast England (Stevenson & Neale, 2012), to Syrian refugees in rural ghettos in southern Turkey (Pelek, 2022). We asked ourselves: What is the role of mobile media in contemporary experiences of homelessness? What does it mean when one's physical and media (im)mobility stem from the dispossession of shelter or resources? In the following we address the special issue articles according to the themes that they foreground and the issues they explore, namely: varying definitions and categories of homelessness; the promise of mobile technology and need to avoid the pitfalls of techno-solutionism; the relationship of mobility to mobile media; responses to homelessness during COVID-19; and contexts of service support.

Dimensions and global contexts of homelessness

Recognizing that homelessness is neither a static category nor a uniform set of experiences is a fundamental starting point for examining the intersection of homelessness and mobile media. The traditional view of homelessness involves someone sleeping out on the street or in a homeless shelter—and indeed, “sleeping rough,” or literal rooflessness. At the same time, homelessness may also be less visible, such as people and families “doubling up” in accommodations meant for fewer residents or others “couch surfing” among friends as a stopgap for sleeping on the street. Attempts to define homelessness—such as the often-used ETHOS typology, the European typology of homelessness—differentiate between rooflessness, houselessness, insecure and inadequate housing (and within these yet again more categories are found) (see Edgar & Meert, 2005). This helps to underline that rooflessness, i.e. living rough, which encompasses sleeping on the street or staying overnight in a homeless shelter, is only one category within the broader spectrum of insecure or precarious living situations. Contributions to this special issue additionally explore different kinds of experiences that push the boundaries of the meaning of homelessness, such as the above-mentioned “van life.”

Homelessness is a global issue, yet the majority of social science research, including studies on homelessness and mobile media, predominantly reflects perspectives from the Global North. There may be important differences, as well as insightful similarities (Marler, 2019), in the ways marginalized people across the globe engage with mobile media to address the challenges of poverty and precarity, that can enlighten our understanding. This issue includes several contributions that shed light on homelessness outside of the Global North, thereby enhancing our comprehension of housing instability as a worldwide concern. These contributions also underscore the unique ways in which mobile media usage intersects with homelessness in different geographical contexts.

One such account in this special issue is offered by Debiana Chakraborty and Chavvi Garg in “Finding a home in or through mobile phones: Access and usage patterns among homeless women in shelter-homes of India.” In their investigation into the digital divide outside of a Western context, Chakraborty and Garg uncover the realities of homeless women in Indian shelter-homes and their access to mobile phones. Their research focus is not only on the meaning of homelessness, but also on gender, expectations, and disappointments in the use of mobile phones by women in the shelters. Mobile phones in this context emerge as a site for government shelter employees to enact—and attempt to reinforce—gendered norms of propriety. When speaking with the researchers, shelter employees expressed fears of negative influence and “moral degradation” as a consequence of the women at the shelters using phones—specifically talking about the women striking up supposedly “improper” romantic relationships through using their phones. Despite assertions by shelter employees to the contrary, many women in these shelters do actively use mobile phones to find partners and maintain relationships, to access economic opportunities, and for leisure and entertainment. This study brings to light the discourse surrounding mobile phones as enablers of sexual self-determination, a contentious issue in the setting of these shelters—and in society—where invasive gendered surveillance is normalized. The article's exploration suggests a dire need for interventions that bridge the digital divide, not only by improving technological access but also by reshaping societal attitudes that limit women's use of mobile technology and providing responses that empower women.

Such accounts lay out the experiences of digital media usage among people experiencing homelessness in non-Western contexts that resonate with the literature from the Global North. The articles in the special issue depict issues such as the unique struggles faced by homeless women, the interplay between socioeconomic exclusion and specific types of homelessness, and the creative use of digital technology by those without homes. At the same time, they present cases which are linked to the unique conditions of their specific locations, such as the particular challenges regarding poor women's autonomy over their romantic relationships in India, and the outcomes of Shanghai's strict COVID-19 lockdowns in the article by Fu and colleagues discussed below. These wide-ranging experiences underscore the need to gather more data from regions beyond the Global North to fully grasp how the experience of being unstably housed produces universal as well as particular experiences of and challenges with digital media usage.

Opportunities and challenges of technology

A key theme arising in the studies collected in this special issue is the balance between highlighting the promise of mobile technology and avoiding the pitfalls of techno-solutionism—a temptation to view technology as a panacea to social and economic divides. On the one hand, as scholars of inequalities, we are interested in the barriers that marginalized communities experience in connecting to the opportunities of the digital age. Mobile phones and the abilities they give access to can be held up as “lifelines,” through which people experiencing homelessness obtain a degree of stability in access to information and social connection that may not be possible with less mobile means of technology.

Such a focus on the upsides of digital inclusion is highlighted in this special issue by Vojtek Dvořák. In “Escaping the rough life of the street: Roofless people and mobile social media,” Dvořák explores how a population of roofless people in the small town of Brno in the Czech Republic uses mobile devices to access social media. The article focuses particularly on the question of engagement through the act of commenting on issues related to homelessness and on self-representation on social media profiles. More broadly, the article asks whether social media use can contribute to the build-up of social capital amongst even the most vulnerable of the unhoused populations. The author uses in-depth interviews to show the importance of mobile media and particularly social media use and connects this to a discussion about how to best support roofless populations. While far from offering technological solutions alone, Dvořák's contribution underlines why digital media matters in the context of homelessness and where there are small pockets of improved quality of life interlinked with the digital.

Attempting to harness the potential of digital media, NGOs, state actors, and private companies have taken to developing a range of digital solutions for homeless people, which are often characterized by a high degree of optimism for the possibilities they will afford homeless people. Examples of these solutions include mobile applications that help homeless individuals navigate local and national services, digital wallets, apps designed for community members to report homelessness to authorities, crowdfunding platforms that connect donors with homeless individuals in need, among others. Despite the novelty of digital interventions in the realm of homelessness and their recent emergence as a focus for service providers, there has been a notable lack of research on projects that either facilitate homeless individuals’ access to digital media or utilize digital media to tackle some of the challenges they face. Addressing this gap, this issue features pioneering digital interventions for the homeless: Colin Rhinesmith, in “‘It's one of the most important things we carry with us’: How mobile hotspots support people experiencing homelessness” examines the role of public libraries in the United States as pivotal access points for not only technology, but also education, employment opportunities, and other community services. His qualitative study zooms in on the experiences of homeless individuals, particularly those in romantic couples, who borrow mobile Wi-Fi hotspot devices from the Boston Public Library. Doing so, Rhinesmith's study points attention to mobile media beyond the personal smartphone, highlighting the stakes surrounding digital resources that are public or shared. A key challenge identified in the study is the scarcity of available devices, leading to long waitlists and highlighting the high demand for digital technology in community service provision environments. The findings underscore the critical reliance on these hotspots by homeless patrons, which serve as key tools enabling them to navigate the complexities of their daily lives, from maintaining relationships to securing essential services and consuming entertainment.

Thus, the contributions to this special issue highlight, on the one the hand, the significance of technology and the potential for people and institutions to help mitigate the challenges of homelessness with the aid of digital media. On the other hand, as researchers whose work explores the struggles and lived realities of people lacking basic securities such as stable housing, we are aware that digital tools are not panaceas. Indeed, the value of the research collected in this special issue is to draw attention to the broader structural inequalities that serve as sources of digital divides, such as in access, literacy, and digital opportunities. The misguided idea that an app can “solve” homelessness is tackled head-on in the article “(In)Visibility and the smartphone: Experiencing homelessness as dictated by urban figurations of social control.” In it, Anna Xymena Tissot and Frank Sowa reveal the fears and desires that people experiencing homelessness in Germany project onto a speculative mobile app designed to help people in similar circumstances. This is explored with reference to the dynamics of visibility and invisibility rendered through use of the app, starkly highlighting the exclusionary and asymmetrical power relations that people living on the street contend with in urban spaces. The benefits of enhanced visibility via geolocation that would make an app a desirable resource—rapid access to social assistance and social relationships with homeless peers—are outweighed by risks of increased surveillance and criminalization of those living rough on the “threshold of illegality.” Through their sophisticated analysis of the responses to the speculative app, the authors develop the broadly applicable idea of “urban figurations of social control” to explain the “continuum of (in)visibilities” that corresponds to experiences of homelessness. They conclude that while there is merit and value in an app to improve access to information and reach people in need, ultimately the problem that needs to be addressed is how the German state deals with homelessness.

Similarly, in the article “Appified homelessness: Locative media apps as tools for the prevention of homelessness in Poland ,” Blanka Brzozowska goes beyond simplistic readings of the pros and cons of technological solutions. As captured in the title, Brzozowska examines two location-based apps designed for addressing homelessness in Poland located within a broader analysis of appified culture. The two apps, Arrels and KMZB, which allow citizens to report the presence of a person experiencing homelessness using geolocative mapping, are analyzed using the walkthrough method. Traversing a range of relevant ideas of the “soft” digital divide, clicktivism and surveillance, the author shows how the particular capabilities and features of the apps cannot be separated from the power relations and local specificities of participatory surveillance in urban hybrid spaces. In both examples, despite some differences, the apps were found to reinforce particular ideas of homelessness as a “threat” to society by rendering homelessness legible as a problem of spatial control, even when their intention is to extend help to those observed to be in immediate need. The author concludes with key suggestions for challenging the public discourse and service responses to homelessness in Poland, and the potential role that an app may play, acknowledging the hybrid and networked social environment in which contemporary homelessness occurs.

The link between housing solutions and technological solutions is explored in José-Luis Martínez-Cantos, Juan-Ángel Martín-Fernández, and Sonia Panadero's article, entitled “The effect of ‘Housing First’ on mobile and digital media usage by people experiencing homelessness.” As part of a broader assessment of a Housing First program in Spain, the article focuses on one particular aspect therein: the question of mobile and digital media use amongst the Housing First participants. Their material is part of a larger survey that was conducted to evaluate the Housing First program. The results show that participating in the program brought some improvements in digital inclusion, especially in relation to social support, as well as an increase in digital activities. Importantly, overall leisure time satisfaction also improved. The contribution hence suggests a (tentative and moderate) positive link between Housing First programs and digital media use. This evaluation has long been overdue and should be extended both content- and geography-wise. This kind of research is desperately needed by policy makers in the homelessness sector.

Mobility and the meanings of “mobile”

Just as the meaning of homelessness is not a stable or fixed category, neither is what it means to be mobile and to engage with mobility in technology. For a long time, mobility was researched in both sociology and geography as well as related fields (see Kaufmann, 2002; Sheller & Urry, 2006; Urry, 2007) but it featured amazingly little in research on mobile media (or rather, in early research on mobile phones). Mobility was empirically researched—in terms of the question of where people were moving with their mobile phones and what this meant, for example, for public spaces—but mobility was not so much of theoretical interest. Mobilities research, however, managed to underline how much mobilities were also a social question and therefore become a question of mobility justice (Sheller, 2018).

As Emma Jackson has shown in her research on young homeless people in the UK, these tend to be “fixed in mobility” (Jackson, 2015). They need to walk a lot, they need to secure food, shelter, and other basic needs at different sites in the city, they need to “do the rounds” simply to survive (see also Humphry, 2021). Hence, they are highly mobile in relation to the (often) urban environment they inhabit. Their quotidian lives are often extremely “mobile” since there is no fixed address for them to attend. Nonetheless, these mobilities are also limited. Jackson contrasts her own travels to an academic event with these quotidian mobilities, rightly pointing to the fact that the young homeless are also very limited in their mobilities, both physically, financially, and socially.

Questions of mobility and privilege are reflected in Kaitlin E. Montague's contribution, “What happens next? The ever-dreaded ‘knock’ and mobile access instability for vehicle residents.” Montague's study concerns “van life,” offering a different view into a precarious living situation. Montague manages to show how mobilities can be ambivalent in this context. The supposedly fancy and desirable lifestyle, an expression of independence, freedom, and adventure, is for many people a more qualified experience, shaped by an array of precarity and insecurity, especially with regard to seemingly mundane activities such as not missing out on connectivity in order to be called to work. One of the challenges faced is the digital connection, which is closely coupled to mobility issues, since vans are not allowed to park everywhere. Connectivity, however, is required to survive—to be contactable. The article thereby manages to show a different version of “houselessness,” but also underlines that the precarity in terms of connectivity is widely shared: through her interviews Montague shows how vehicle residents often have to put in a lot of work to stay digital. Montague uses the mobilism framework (Hartmann, 2023) to embed her results and refocus the debates around precarity in the context of mobilities and digital lives.

Just as Montague manages to bring differentiation into the question of mobilities and mobile media, Erica Polson, Renee A. Botta, and Emily Van Houweling in their study underline yet another link between movement, mapping and precarious life situations. In their article, “Where's the bathroom in this ‘mobile home’? Adding Water, Sanitation & Hygiene (WaSH) infrastructure to agendas on homelessness and digital media,” the authors address the challenges faced by unhoused individuals in Denver, Colorado, regarding access to Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WaSH) facilities. The study is centered on designing for the real-world problems of homelessness while being open-eyed as to the limitations of technological solutions. The focus is on creating a Google Map with information about publicly available facilities and sharing it with unhoused individuals. The hope is that this smartphone-accessible map could assist in incorporating bathrooms into the “mobile homes” of unhoused people. The authors extend the concept of “mobile homing” to highlight the role of a smartphone in providing a (minimal) replacement for the habits and securities associated with the traditional home. However, the underlying lack of public bathroom facilities to begin with in Denver, as in other cities, undercuts much of the exciting potential of an app to inform and coordinate access for people lacking such a basic resource. The article instead suggests that success in digital solutions for WaSH access requires addressing digital literacies and ensuring the availability of facilities and services. The broader discussion highlights the significance of inclusive public spaces and the need to consider offline inclusion in digital inclusion efforts, cautioning against prioritizing access without addressing obstacles to successful digital media use. The article concludes by advocating for a more expansive and safe public WaSH infrastructure in urban planning while recommending that technological solutions include digital literacy and awareness of technological barriers sustaining mobile homelessness.

Responses to homelessness during COVID-19

As already indicated, the COVID-19 pandemic compounded many existing forms of exclusion for groups who experienced multiple forms of disadvantage, including homelessness and digital exclusion. Around the world, countries adopted different approaches to homelessness during the height of the pandemic, which some suggested represented a potential policy shift in the way that homelessness is treated and managed. In this context, homelessness became a focus of new kinds of government and community responses that were adopted as part of the broader emergency response to the global pandemic. For example, in Canada, France, Australia, and New Zealand, dedicated housing programs were rapidly implemented to accommodate people who were sleeping rough in hotels because of known shortages in the availability of temporary and emergency accommodation (Parsell et al., 2023).

In an account from China, Pengfei Fu, Chengxi Liao, and Haiqing Yu, in their article entitled “Homeless food delivery riders and their transportal home in Shanghai's lockdown,” examine how, in the spring of 2022, during a rigorous three-month COVID-19 lockdown in Shanghai, food delivery riders faced the paradox of being immobilized despite their roles as mobile workers. Originating mostly from rural areas and in pursuit of urban opportunities, these individuals found themselves in a state of enforced houselessness, as the city's stringent measures pinned them in a bind of mobility, given that their digital work permit pass barred them from accessing many residential areas. Amidst this, their smartphones emerged as a lifeline: Fu et al. reference the “transportal home” as conceptualized by Miller (2021), where the digital space became a dwelling in and of itself through connections with family and friends, to explain how riders used their mobile phones as an affective space. Messaging app groups evolved into digital havens, fostering solidarity and relationship building within the rider community and beyond. These platforms enabled them to participate in “Yun” (cloud) social activities, such as virtual drinking sessions. All the while, social media and video platforms not only offered entertainment but also reflected the societal tensions of the time, frequently depicting the clashes between delivery riders and the public—stoking further anxiety in the riders. This article highlights riders’ inventive use of mobile phones to maintain a semblance of “home,” underscoring their resilience. Nevertheless, it casts a stark light on the precariousness of their reality—a byproduct of the digital gig economy and a lockdown regime that left them unsupported by the government or delivery platforms, creating new forms of homelessness and precarity in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Contexts of digital use and service support

In another article addressing the complex dynamics around mobile access and its promised benefits, Heather Williams, Becky Faith, and Linda Waldman, in their article, “Technologies of inclusion and marginalization: Mobile phones and multiple exclusion homeless women,” discuss the realities for women in the UK experiencing multiple forms of exclusion including homelessness. The use of mobile phones by these women is paradoxical: although their phones may lack communication value, they are crucial for social cohesion and solidarity within the community of people experiencing homelessness. The provision of cheap and disposable phones by social services contributes to the instability of access for the interviewed women. The study emphasizes the role of mobile phones as a form of resistance and refusal, with women using phones to resist societal expectations, coercive partners, and social services. Meanwhile, the social isolation of participants in the study is both exacerbated and mitigated by mobile phones. Instead of facilitating mainstream connections, these phones become tools for social connectedness within the unhoused community, serving as forms of payment and circulating useful phone numbers. In this way, the study acknowledges the emancipatory power of mobile phones for marginalized populations, but highlights that “meaningful access” is not automatic. Despite the challenges, women in these situations demonstrate agency in their decisions regarding mobile phone use, challenging prevailing discourses promoted by social services.

In “Context matters: Exploring the mediated nature of digital service provision within homelessness organizations,” Jennifer Harris examines how the uses of digital technologies by people experiencing homelessness are structured by the organizational contexts of the support services they engage with. Drawing on three case studies in the UK, and on single adults who are homeless, Harris examines the interpretative, material, and cultural processes of technology appropriation within organizational contexts, using short-term ethnographic observations, and narrative and semi-structured qualitative interviews. The article adeptly applies a Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) framework to analyze the different ways that the three homelessness support organizations produce particular technological arrangements that set particular limits or enable engagements with technologies by the users of those services, covering digital resources, placement and availability of technologies, and rules and regulations that govern their use. The case studies reveal the broader policy agendas and discourse around homelessness that shape the approach to the organizational technological arrangements. Harris's study compares approaches to technology provision from care-based models of certain drop-in centers to a neoliberal “responsibilization” agenda to spaces of technology access focused on encouragement, personalization, and flexibility. The article makes an important contribution to the way that the regulation of spaces which people experiencing homelessness inhabit extends to organizational spaces as well, and concludes that organizations need to explicitly consider their approach to mobile digital access, use, and needs to avoid inadvertently reinscribing digital inequalities through the interpretative, material, and cultural forces that shape them.

Conclusion

Studying the role of mobile media in society will continue to require a focus on a diverse set of socioeconomic and geographic contexts. By putting forward the case of homelessness, in this special issue, we draw attention to how precarity in living conditions in settings across the globe shifts the meaning and the impact of mobility in communication for people adapting to technological change in the 21st century. Just as mobile media is not defined by any strict set of meanings of practices, neither can we reduce the impact of mobile media onto the status of people experiencing homelessness in its different forms. The studies in this special issue highlight how access to a mobile phone for people without stable housing can align with feelings of autonomy and a better ability to navigate the requirements of social and economic life. At the same time, the broader set of exclusions that people experiencing homelessness face—such as the restrictive oversight of institutions and the stereotypes from society, or the lack of other essential infrastructure or opportunities in society—are clear limitations on the potential for technology to have a revolutionary role in people's lives. It will require an ongoing attention to homelessness in its various forms, and the meaning people make of mobility and mobile technology in their contexts, to push forward this area of research, including opportunities to intervene and improve conditions.

As the contributions to this special issue have shown, questions of diverse interpretations of “home”—what and where it is—accompany the lives of people experiencing diverse forms of homelessness. People struggling to find stable housing similarly approach mobile media with a variety of concerns and attach meanings to their devices and connections in ways that research is only beginning to understand. At the same time, as the studies presented in this special issue underline, mobile media in the field of homelessness cannot be separated from the broader structures of inequality that people experience, nor from the solutions proposed more generally for homelessness, including solutions that tend to prioritize technology over more comprehensive political and social changes needed. As a final word, we turn to the research in this special issue as support for caution against prioritizing access without addressing obstacles to securing stable and affordable housing and safe living conditions, and argue for linking mobile media use to increasing efforts towards social inclusion.