Interactional barriers to exiting homelessness: an ethnographic study of a homeless hostel

Long, Fiona 2024. Interactional barriers to exiting homelessness: an ethnographic study of a homeless hostel. PhD Thesis, Cardiff University. Item availability restricted.

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Abstract

This thesis advances our understanding as to why some people become stuck in ‘this place’ (a homeless hostel) and places like it. Whilst the existing literature highlights ‘barriers’ to ‘exiting’ homelessness, these are often oversimplified and dichotomised as being either structural (e.g., a lack of affordable housing) or individual (e.g., addiction). Instead, this thesis illustrates how the barriers to exiting homeless hostels are rooted within the interaction order of institutions (Goffman, 1961; 1983). It achieves this by taking an ethnographic approach to life at Holbrook House – the English homeless hostel upon which this thesis is based – and by observing how deeply-rooted barriers play out in day-to-day interactions. Fieldwork took place between January 2020 and November 2022 and involved participant observation, online semi-structured interviews, online timeline interviews, and in person unstructured interviews. This research finds that homeless hostels are one point amidst a broader ‘institutional web,’ a series of institutions which are interactionally interconnected by members of the hostel. Residents at Holbrook House just happen to reside at ‘this place’ at this time, though often bounce between an array of other institutions, including prisons and detox facilities. Whilst ‘this place’ (or these places) may aim to normalise those who enter, ‘hyper inclusion’ i.e., forcible inclusion within an array of bureaucracies, solidifies their relative abnormality when a normative frame is employed. By encapsulating the viewpoints of both staff and resident teams, the polyphonic voice within this thesis demonstrates how all hostel members must contend with interactional challenges, and must therefore learn to play the institutional game. For instance, when faced with a series of ordinary institutional troubles, the staff practice ‘learning not to see.’ In contrast to the dominant 'pathways' perspective, getting out of the hostel in a ‘positive’ way, or being stuck in 'this place,’ are both shown be interactional accomplishments.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Date Type:	Completion
Status:	Unpublished
Schools:	Social Sciences (Includes Criminology and Education)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General)
Funders:	ESRC
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	24 September 2024
Last Modified:	24 Sep 2024 08:51
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/172235

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