Gender, Homelessness and Social Capital: Young Women's Management of Disrupted Housing Transitions

Mainstream understandings of young people’s housing transitions inadequately reflect the diversity of experiences and social processes that shape the course to independent living. By only recognising normative pathways for young people leaving the family home significant experiences are either being misrepresented or lost. In Australia, a largely hidden aspect of youth housing transitions is the presence of homelessness. Many young people in need of accommodation are faced with a difficult housing market where there is a short supply of safe and affordable properties. For young people, to be without a home is not only to be homeless but also to be removed from all the subjective meanings a home carries. In addition, increasingly globalised economies and deindustrialisation have had serious implications for young people’s transitions to secure accommodation due to employment insecurity and financial instability. I argue that the complex relationship between disrupted housing transitions and youth homelessness needs to take into account  structural factors relating to gender, race/ethnicity, class, location, sexuality and dis/ability. Accordingly, the variety of young people experiencing homelessness in Australia demands new ways of conceptualising the phenomenon. The application of a gendered lens to homelessness research is one possible way to challenge dominant discourses of youth housing transitions.  In this paper I explore young women’s experiences of homelessness and the utilisation of intimate relationships as a form of context-specific capital for accessing material support, particularly access to stable accommodation. To this end, I draw on theoretical perspectives of social capital developed by Pierre Bourdieu. These concepts are examined from a feminist standpoint to explain how Bourdieu’s work may be appropriated to advance knowledge of how gender impacts on both the management of homelessness as well as transitions to stable accommodation.