Different Social Contexts

1. Different Social Contexts

2. Closed on myself, With his eyes on the ground, With the soul pouring out suffering, Here I am hidden in this condition. Those around me, Those who run in dizzying bustle, Race that sometimes desires or contempt, They call me Homeless. I am protected in a shell, My long beard and shaggy hair Are fundamental props. They function like a shield that hides me from the looks of others, These looks that tear me apart. Here in my shell I feel safe, There was despair, I feel completely naked. Out of my world I find no pillars where I cling, Nor sense of belonging and usefulness. Are we free from falling to the condition of homelessness? Don’t forget that before being a homeless these people had had a home. After all, what protects us from this break from the world ruled by enclosure? “Book of Disquiet”, Fernando Pessoa (Translatedfrom original portuguese poem)

3. Social exclusion No one is free from feeling exclusion, because everyone can, in a certain time of our lives, feel victims of exclusion. The concept of exclusion allows rhetorical uses of different qualities, since the concetion of inequality as a result of disability or individual maladaptation to injustice and social exploitation. Excluding implies distinguishing people or groups, giving them a separate category, and it also corresponds to a process of social disqualification.

4. The phenomenon of social exclusion must be understood as a multiproblem process, which is not limited to the lack of economic resources, but it includes a series of situations arising from social bond ruptures, as it is the case of elderly people living in solitude conditions, people with disabilities or psychiatric diseases, ethnic minorities or unemployed people and young people unable to get their first job. Social exclusion is not something restricted to the fringe of society, composed of the lowest social classes, but it is an ongoing process that reaches more and more all social classes. For its part, living in a context of poverty does not necessarily mean exclusion, although it may lead to it.

5. Thehomelesspopulation The homeless population faces important challenges, because, on the one hand, they have lost their ties with society, and, on the other hand, society creates its own barriers that make reintegration more difficult. More than the lack of housing, the homeless person loses the statute of active member of society.

6. Understanding the phenomenon of homelessness means that we know and analyze with the homeless people their life’s history, their choices and motivations, their real needs, that is, the meanings attributed by the individual to his condition. The concept of homelessness has undergone transformations over time. If once this concept was closely associated with people begging and committing acts of delinquency, currently, the concept has become more embracing, including people who are victims of economic crisis, people with precarious work or unemployed people, people victim of several addictions, among others.

7. Most of the type of intervention with the homeless population is based on a welfare logic, that essentially seeks to meet the most basic needs of the human beings: food, hygiene and clothing. Nevertheless, the intervention with this population should be based on empowerment, enabling people to be the subject of their own story, so that they may control their lives and, thus, they won’t need the support to access to the available respources in their community.

8. Homelessness is the result of a life trajectory fraught with lack of support and affections which is transformed into a fragile structure, that is getting worse with the subsequent experiences. (Bento & Barreto, 2002). Although the emerging of this situation cannot just be understood by the induvidual factors, these surely contribute to it.

9. Being homeless results from the loss of ties with many collective organizations, such as family, school, work or leisure. Nonetheless, some authors say that living in the street does not have just a negative side, as it can be a place where people meet their own selves, where they build and obey their rules and ambitions and create their own way of living.

10. “Each homeless experience is unique and, therefore, it results on several meanings, as each human being has his / her own way of dealing with what happens in his / her life. “ (Jesus & Menezes, 2010)