engleski

The invisibility of street homelessness in Croatia: Implications for research and policy

Homelessness was a relatively new unresearched phenomenon in post-socialist countries during the 1990s, due to criminalisation and its hidden nature during socialism. Three decades later, the scale and scope of homelessness in post-socialist countries still remains entirely unknown to social welfare systems and general populations in countries that now belong to the EU. As a way of hiding homelessness and negating its increasing prevalence, governments have re-introduced or propagate stricter enforcement of criminalisation and penalisation measures. Tough and unfair legal regulations that often result in legal, service and market exclusion, minimise the visibility of people experiencing homelessness and can make life quite impossible for this population. The aim of this presentation is to show why rough sleepers in Croatia remain hidden in real life (due to codes that criminalise a lack of ID and local address requirements) and in the national statistics (refusal to acknowledge and take responsibility for the growing numbers of roofless people). Based on ethnographic accounts and examples, this discussion will be also about measures that limit use of public spaces to punishment of life-sustaining and human activities. Discussion will also explore the implications of homelessness invisibility for qualitative research (ethical considerations) and the overall absence of reliable data on and understandings about hidden homelessness to inform policy.

street homelessness ; invisibility ; criminalisation ;

nije evidentirano