Out of Work and House and Home: Contested Youth in an English Homeless Hostel

Drawing on fieldwork in England, this article considers a group of unemployed teenagers in occasional residence at a hostel for the homeless, examining their attitudes to work, welfare and adulthood. Interactions between the hostel staff and these young people are discussed. Staff and residents are shown to be at odds over how best to make sense of and respond to the problems of homelessness and unemployment. The residents, most of them in their mid to late teens, could be said to be growing up under extremely difficult circumstances, but growing up allthe same. They might even be described as growing up faster than others their age – of necessity. Nevertheless, I suggest that their present difficulties are not always something these young people want to be too grown up about, if they can help it. Out of work and away from home, being young is one of the few things that they have going for them, and it provides them with a way of coping with the problems they face