Living on the street: social organisation and gender relations of Australian street kids

Abstract. The resurgence and visibility of homeiessness since the 1980s have become significant social and political issues, widely debated in academic circles and in the popular press. The composition of tho homeless population has changed markedly in this period, and now includes more women and children, and more of the dcinstitutionalised mentally ill. The lives of street kids in the city of Newcastle, Australia show patterns of structured behaviour and territorial and social organisation. They have a distinctive group identity and moral order. Tlicir subculture is complex with strains of nonpatriarchal and patriarchal relations combined with little tolerance of forms of difference. The mora! code of the youth subculture may be a form of resistance to their histories of abuse but is also conservative in reproducing aspects of the culture that they resist. The social networks generated on the street provide a self-maintaining force which contri-butes to a culture of chronic homelcssness. Homelessness in Australia Homeiessness is a growing political and social issue in Australia as it is in the USA, the United Kingdom, and many parts of continental Europe. The factors which encourage homeiessness are occurring simultaneously in many late-capitalist societies. Most significantly, these economies have undergone a marked ideological shift to the New Right, which emphasises the primacy of market forces. Australia's economy, highly subject to external influences, has been severely affected by the impact of global economic restructuring, deregulation, and microeconomic reform (Australia