They are young; they are healthy, so why don't they go to work?! : examining society's view on youth homelessness

The present article focuses on one of the marginalized social groups in our country – young homeless people – placing their social status within the context of the risk of permanent disintegration of a social group vulnerable to intergenerational poverty. In relation to this, the article includes the concept of the underclass and ponders its various connotations. It describes contemporary phenomena which pose an ever greater risk for young people, and focuses primarily on the transition into the world of employment and the inclusion into the health care system. For purposes of illustration it relies on two studies of homelessness conducted heretofore, “Homelessness in Ljubljana”/»Brezdomstvo v Ljubljani« (Dekleva and Razpotnik, 2007) and “Homelessness, health, and access to health care services”/»Brezdomstvo, zdravje in dostopnost zdravstvenih storitev« (Razpotnik and Dekleva, 2009). The results reveal a trend, whereby young homeless individuals have on average a lower level of education even when compared to the larger category of homeless people, and none of the young homeless individuals taking part in the study (2009) had been permanently employed at the time the study was conducted. Another salient issue is also the high rate of expulsion from school – homeless youths are more than twice as likely to have been expelled from school as the entire sample group of homeless individuals. For these reasons homeless youths in Slovenia fit the concept of “status zer0 youth”