Watson - Youth homelessness and survival sex: intimate relationships and gendered subjectivities

Young womens homelessness is often hidden from view not showing up in official statistics nor in popular representations of rough sleepers. In this important and original new study, Juliet Watson vividly illuminates young womens experiences. In doing so she makes us question our understandings of both homelessness and of transactional sex, opening up nuanced ways of thinking about the intimate relationships women build in order to survive.

Rosalind Gill,Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis, City University of London, UK

In Youth Homelessness and Survival Sex, Juliet Watson offers a compelling and confronting account of how young women face, understand, and manage the risks they face in homelessness. Through exceptional empirical research, deep theoretical expertise, and sensitive engagement with experiences of poverty, gendered violence, and social exclusion, Watson illuminates how these young women make strategic use of heteronormative femininity in their search for security, survival, and resources. This is an important and valuable book that reinforces the critical importance of gender analysis of precarious lives.

JaneMaree Maher,Director, Centre for Womens Studies and Gender Research, Monash University, Australia

In this fascinating and disturbing book, Juliet Watson provides us with a scholarly yet unflinching examination of the reality of survival sex for young homeless women. She shines much needed light on a topic that is too often referred to in passing, and seldom given the in-depth consideration it deserves.

Suzanne Fitzpatrick,Professor of Housing and Social Policy in the Institute for Social Policy, Housing, Environment and Real Estate (I-SPHERE), Heriot-Watt University, UK

Youth Homelessness and Survival Sex

Survival sex, commonly understood to be the exchange of sex for material support, is a practice that is associated with young homeless women. However, such a narrow definition of survival sex fails to recognise the multiple, complex, and coexisting motivations of young homeless women for engaging in intimate relationships in post-industrial capitalist society.

In Youth Homelessness and Survival Sex, Watsons insightful analysis of personal narratives reveals how young homeless women are exposed to situations in which survival can be impeded or assisted by playing out specific gender roles. Indeed, in identifying and contesting the dominant social discourses that young homeless women draw upon to frame their experiences of intimate affairs, Watson challenges the reader to understand how gendered subjectivities are produced and performed through heteronormative relationships. This enlightening book is vital in showing that homelessness is not a gender-neutral phenomenon and that there are gender-specific processes and practices involved in the navigation of poverty, violence, and social exclusion.

Youth Homelessness and Survival Sex will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as postdoctoral researchers, interested in fields such as Homelessness, Youth Studies, Social Work, and Gender Studies.

Juliet Watson is a lecturer in the School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, at RMIT University, Australia.

Youth, Young Adulthood and Society

www.routledge.com/Youth-Young-Adulthood-and-Society/book-series/YYAS

Series editor: Andy Furlong, University of Glasgow, UK

The Youth, Young Adulthood and Society series brings together social scientists from many disciplines to present research monographs and collections, seeking to further research into youth in our changing societies around the world today. The books in this series advance the field of youth studies by presenting original, exciting research, with strongly theoretically- and empirically-grounded analysis.

Published:

Muslim Youth in the Diaspora

Challenging Extremism through Popular Culture

Pam Nilan

Young Migrant Identities

Creativity and Masculinity

Sherene Idriss

Young People in the Labour Market

Past, Present, Future

Andy Furlong, John Goodwin, Henrietta OConnor, Sarah Hadfield, Stuart Hall, Kevin Lowden and Rka Plugor

Youth, Class and Everyday Struggles

Steven Threadgold

Youth Homelessness and Survival Sex

Intimate Relationships and Gendered Subjectivities

Juliet Watson

Forthcoming:

Spaces of Youth

Identities, Inequalities and Social Change

David Farrugia

Rethinking Young Peoples Marginalisation

Beyond Neo-Liberal Futures?

Perri Campbell, Lyn Harrison, Chris Hickey and Peter Kelly

Youth Homelessness and Survival Sex

Intimate Relationships and Gendered Subjectivities

Juliet Watson

Contents

Many people have assisted in a multitude of ways to see this book to completion. My sincere gratitude to the young women who agreed to participate in this research project. Their contributions were invaluable and I hope that I have done justice to their experiences. I am also indebted to the support and intellectual stimulus offered by my colleagues at the Youth Research Centre at the University of Melbourne, the Australian Womens and Gender Studies Association, and, more recently, at the School of Global, Urban and Social Studies at RMIT University. Many thanks to Johanna Wyn, Hernn Cuervo, Jessica Gerrard, Charlotte Williams, Suellen Murray, Guy Johnson, David Farrugia, Steven Threadgold, Sarah Casey, Sharlene Nipperess, Ben Cooke, and Brian Coffey. I am also grateful to my publisher, Routledge, especially Elena Chiu and Emily Briggs, who assisted with the publication of this book. Finally, I would like to thank my parents for their ongoing support and encouragement.