YOUTH HOMELESSNESS
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YOUTH HOMELESSNESS
Youth homelessness is my topic of focus for this paper. Homelessness has been an issue of discussion over the decades with researchers shifting perspectives over the matter. Youths are a generation that need attention and focus upon, and the issue of their homelessness has a lot to be learned upon. Youth homelessness is understood by people differently, applying different theories in examining the issue. Homelessness refers to the situation where an individual lacks home or parental care. Such people live and move in the streets and abandoned areas of the community, accompanied with strangers or friends.
My interest towards this topic is as a matter of fact that young adults that are homeless are exposed to risks ranging from physical and sexual abuse and exploitation, disease and disabilities, low esteem and loss of self-control and ultimately unprecedented indecent deaths. Youths move into homelessness due to several factors that they could not control. The articulated sense of failure and shame and lack of the feeling of belonging to their existence make them exit to homelessness. Others force rejection and ejection due to social factors and the issues they experience within their background.
It is in my firm belief that there is immense solution that can be offed concerning the issue of homelessness to ensure reduced rates of homelessness or movement out of homelessness to homes by the youth. In this paper, I present different aspects of homelessness and the perspectives and approaches that need to be engaged in dealing with the situation. The literature presented presents arguments on the nature of homelessness and their casing factors, with the movements from homelessness into complete homelessness or homes.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Corr, Mayock, & O'Sullivan (2011), examined the process meaning and definition surrounding young people exiting homelessness, arguing that research has shifted to more focus on exits from homelessness. There is more advanced understanding of the complexities of the homelessness of the youth with researchers demonstrating possible paths to the issue of homelessness. Corr, Mayock, & O'Sullivan (2011), explored in particular the processes surrounding exit routes taken by the youths out of homelessness and the causes while distinguishing the ways, whether dependent or independent.
According to Corr, Mayock, & O'Sullivan (2011), homelessness is a complex situation though more likely to be temporary, caused by multiple phenomena and interaction between individuals and structural factors. The writers discuss social constructionism that is based on the notion that behavior is constructed through social interaction of people. This theory emphasizes on the nature of social interactions between people and their language for describing such interaction. Homelessness is presented as an episode in a person’s housing pathway through their personal influence or structural dimensions.
Getting acceptance to a home or maintaining a stable housing situation is found to be a complex situation by Corr, Mayock, & O'Sullivan (2011). From the review of the literature, it is evident that homelessness exiting process is affected not only by access to secure housing alone, but together with other factors. Such factors include family support, peer influence, and personal motivation, a proof that the path of youth homelessness is influenced with personal together with structural factors. The paper presents being female and young as enabling factors that would lead to home exits. This gives a leap in the factor of gender in homelessness aspect.
Transition from homelessness of the youth is seen to be accompanied with change of other life events. Young people quickly commit to and remain in a change across their life. They would return to undertake education or training. These contributed in structuring the lives of the youth and enhance their future to prevent them from returning to homelessness. Those who exited homelessness also abandoned irresponsible social behaviors and sought for treatment and therapy. This was attributed to decent housing that serves as a motivation to the youths to take control over their life. Relationship with the street peers and relations they deemed linked to for personal behavioral change and development.
Corr, Mayock, & O'Sullivan (2011), found that family support and professional intervention was crucial in the exiting process though it differs among individuals. The article draws differentiation between independent and dependent exits to exemplify the nature of homelessness. Exiting homelessness should be linked to the manner and support mechanism that led to achieving the exit.
Farrugia (2011) presented the subject of youth homelessness and individualized subjectivity, an article aimed to build upon the understanding youth homelessness through analysis of identity construction. It examines together with other aspects, the structural and institutional environment of the youth homelessness. Furrugia (2011) focuses on the way structural, institutional and subjective processes interact to aid in creating characters of the youth who experience homelessness. It reflects and stresses on understanding of youth homelessness as an individualized form of inequality.
According to Farrugia (2011), the nature of youth homelessness is understood best on how young people narrate their identities and construct themselves. People view homelessness as one of the inequalities in personalized social contexts. Youth narratives on homelessness can be analyzed on the structural positions they relate to and such related subjectivities which the young people must negotiate and navigate to survive. The intersections of institutional and structural processes are made meaningful through moral individualism as the youths are positioned for personal responsibility.
The relation between the family of young people and the external environment to which they are situated is most important in creating the condition for youth homelessness. Most of the young people experiencing homelessness tends to come from disadvantaged backgrounds structurally, giving class importance in determining homelessness as much as the biographies. The absence of family support leaves a wider structural inequality that gain significance on the youths. Farrugia presents the theory of individualism in his work to describe his case and the relationship between subjectivity and contemporary social structures. Homelessness has been associated with personal decisions and individual failures.
According to Ferrugia (2011), basic insecurity and instability compels the construction of individualized subjectivities. Once there is no base for drawing identity and support, the youth feels personally responsible their lives obscured by the natural environment thus compelling them to reflexivity. Consequences of individualization vary across individuals so is reflexivity and personal responsibility. The identity of the youths can be connected with the event of homelessness through understanding of identity in relation to fundamental processes.
Both the literature argues that the issue of homelessness is a complex situation that cannot be understood from a single perspective but a mix of all possible factors. While one explains the theory of social constructivism and the other individualism, both appreciates the role played by families in solving the problem of homelessness of the youth. These articles differ on what they think is the cause of homelessness exit. While the other argues that the homelessness is caused by social interactions on how they are defined, the other relates it to individual decisions and personal factors as the proprietor of movement from homes. The literature review identifies that there is no single cause focus of homelessness, or rather factors that are interconnected. The analysis confirms the thesis statement by affirming that, while addressing the issue of homelessness, different theories or approaches can be examined and processes designed.