Being somewhere: young homeless people in inner-city Sydney

Drawing on in-depth interviews, participant observation and my experiences of workingwith young homeless people in refuges, in this thesis I develop an analysis whichidentifies some key spatial practices through which young people negotiate the field ofhomelessness in inner-city Sydney. The particular contribution of this work is to considerhomelessness in terms of a theorised understanding of the broader role of place withinhomelessness, rather than in terms of the immediacy of cause or solution. Whileacknowledging the importance of the large body of work which has focused on thestructural causes of homelessness and the need for a clear policy-oriented definition ofhomelessness, I develop an alternative agenda for a focus on young homeless people's struggles to feel 'in place' and 'at home'. These struggles throw into relief the need tounderstand young people's homelessness in terms of a search, not just for a place to stay,but for a place to belong.Utilising the rich body of work which explores the important relation of place andsubjectivity, I connect young people's experiences of place within homelessness with thebroader social and phenomenological concepts of 'displacement' and 'implacement'. Inparticular, I focus on the spatial relations through which young people construct andorganise their daily paths and begin to make sense of their often painful and chaotic livesand their fears about the future. I contextualise their fragile experiences of beingsomewhere in a broader spatial structure of constant movement and grief and feelings ofalienation from the wider community. I consider the enduring role of past homes in theircontinuing struggle to piece together a way of ‘being at home’ both in terms of drawingtogether a network of physical places of safety and in terms of experiencing a sense ofacceptance, recognition and rootedness through place. I point to the critical need toinclude broader understandings of both home and homelessness in addressing thedisplacement which shapes the experience of homelessness for young people and impactson the success of immediate measures developed to respond to it