Homelessness
This book provides insights into the experiences of homelessness, while exploring its psychological and socio-economic dimensions. Hunger, addiction, and disability, which often accompany homelessness, are brought into focus and discussed within the frameworks of promoting social welfare and enabling human capability in this volume.
Based on the authors ethnographic and quantitative research on homeless families living on the streets of Delhi, this book identifies some of the most acute problems associated with homelessness. It analyzes the causes of homelessness and draws connections between social bonds and family, socio-economic status, and psychopathology. It also includes personal accounts of hardship and trauma which quantify the systematic discrimination and marginalization that people living on the streets face.
The volume offers policy recommendations to protect the right to self-determination, dignity, and self-efficacy of the homeless and help rehabilitate them. It will be a useful guide for students and researchers of social sciences specializing in psychology, sociology, economics, and development studies. The book will also be of interest to mental health professionals and policy-makers in designing effective strategies.
S. P. K. Jena is Professor of Applied Psychology at the University of Delhi. He teaches applied behaviour analysis and clinical psychology. Prior to this, he was head of the Department of Psychology as well as the Director of the Institute of Behavioural Sciences, Gujarat Forensic Sciences University, Gandhinagar (201819). Some of his publications are Perspectives in Mental Retardation (2001), Behaviour Therapy: Techniques Research and Applications (2008), and Learning Disability: Theory to Practice (2013), which has also been translated into Hindi. He has also served as Editor of the Indian Journal of Clinical Psychology.
First published 2020
by Routledge
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2020 S. P. K. Jena
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ISBN: 978-0-367-42586-9 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-85371-6 (ebk)
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Homelessness is witnessed in cities all over the world, from the most affluent nations to the poorest ones. It is considered one of the worst forms of degradation of human dignity and an index of extreme poverty a sad global phenomenon. Homeless people are often excluded from effective social participation. It paves the way for human rights violation. Social exclusion is a disabling factor for human development. Severe deprivation ultimately forces them to lead a miserable life and that becomes irreversible.
Homeless people are seen in almost every city, on the street, under the flyover, in tattered tents of plastic sheets, broken asbestos, even under the trees; theyre seen in the biting cold of the winter, under the scorching sun of the summer, and in pouring rains of the monsoon. They beg for money, food, or clothes. The young homeless boys and girls are seen selling flowers, balloons, toys, or cheap consumable goods for their survival. I have attempted to take a closer look at their conditions of living, their psychological trauma, and problems of day-to-day living and reflect on their experiences of the world, which is the soul of this book.
Many ask: Why do people become homeless live on the streets helplessly, in unhygienic and inhuman conditions throughout their lives, and fail to come out of this poverty trap? Are they really less intelligent? Do they have poorer survival skills than those who have roofs above their heads? Are they intellectually subnormal and less capable to adapt themselves? Are they victims of atrocities or suffer from gross psychopathology? Do they just want to live on charity? There are many such questions. There cannot be a single answer to these questions. Practitioners of social science, education, and medicine have grappled with these challenging questions. Although poverty accounts for a large part of it, there are several other factors which lead to homelessness. Generic theories of poverty are many. Some focus on inequality (e.g., Castells, 2000); and others, on deprivation of capability and lack of power. The roots of their inequality are unclear. Similarly, effective interventions are also microscopic. According to the capability theory (Sen, 1999), people ideally should have freedom to be healthy, have an education, find decent work, and live to a decent age with a decent quality of life. Whereas most homeless people are deprived of all of these. This lack of the capability to sustain is the core feature of their homelessness.
More specific theories outline the typologies of poverty for instance, absolute poverty or total destitution, poverty by others, social poverty, or consumerist poverty (e.g., Lummis, 1991). However, they do not explain the inner dynamics and human experience that mediates this condition as well as perpetuates it. It requires an idiographic, case-by-case approach to understand its nature instead of seeking a generic answer.
They have too many problems to solve in their everyday life and have too many questions to answer. Unhygienic conditions of living, malnutrition, illiteracy, unemployment, and poor social support systems make them vulnerable to disease, disability, and crime. For many of them, life is a nightmare and the future is a fearsome darkness. Quick-fix solutions such as providing financial packages and other social benefits to ease their stress may be helpful, but they are insufficient in improving their conditions of living. It is not only that there were many obstacles to growth, but also it generates psychological resistance, which fails to motivate them enough to change their lives. Apart from providing tangible incentives, there is a need for creating motivation for change, sensitization, as well as skill development. In this context, education, empowerment, and catharsis of their feelings play key roles for their psychological transformation.
Although, there are several government programmes for the poor, living in the slums, and several welfare measures, many of these benefits do not reach the homeless. The distance between policies and postures is wide enough. The process through which urban policies and programs evolved, leading to eventual legislation, is torturous. Therefore, it is often not easy to distinguish between policy and postures in urban matters. The country has taken several decades to make note of its urban realities (Sivaramakrishnan, 2011). Now, we speak about the management of urban matters such as education and rehabilitation of the homeless more widely and more frequently than ever before. This has definitely helped us to raise awareness and concern about the problems of the homeless, but solutions are still elusive. Life of the homeless people, particularly the younger ones, are lamentable. Due to lack of education and social support, many children engage in unconventional survival strategies. Many of these strategies involve the street economy that is illegal (e.g., theft, prostitution, drug and human trafficking). A majority of them engage in begging or selling of consumable goods. These strategies provide resources for street survival. As Snow (2000) argues, children need to be schooled, as they need to learn schooled literacy in addition to their non-standard ways of acquiring literacy. This is necessary for surviving in educational settings. Within curricula constructions and pedagogical concerns, schooling develops a conservative, powerful discourse of regularity and normativity compared with literacy as it is lived in daily lives which flow, sometimes invisibly, across the day and involve a number of complex, interlinked practices (Rowsell and Pahl, 2015). Engaging in classroom activities prevents them from engaging in various illegal and commercial activities early in their lives. Further, earning early in their lives and parental encouragement for the same does not motivate them to go to school. Involvement in crimes leads to exclusion from labour force due to convictions. Apart from illicit survival behaviours, poor hygiene and health conditions as well as poor job skills often prevent them to be on any job for long. They are often marginalized from formal education and economy. Even if they are put in schools, they often drop out or fail to attend regularly due to many reasons. Lack of encouragement for schooling, discrimination in the schools, poor performance, and unavailability of specially trained teachers make their schooling a nightmarish experience, leading to drop out. Due to poor education, their chances of regular employment decline substantially.
