"Просяк бях, направо просяк"
"I was a Beggar, a Straight Out Beggar"

Homelessness and the "Elusive Social Vulnerability"

Author(s): Dimitar Panchev
Subject(s): Philosophy, Social Sciences, Logic, Social Philosophy, Sociology
Published by: Пловдивски университет »Паисий Хилендарски«
Keywords: socioanalysis; homelessness; Roma; social vulnerability
Summary/Abstract: This article is based on the ‘Roma, homelessness, inequality’ research study, which is a part of the “'I have no one to turn to!’ - socioanalytical dimensions of vulnerability” research project and the work with the methodology, integrated in the project of socioanalytical protocol. The article focuses on a craftsman from the neighborhood of ‘Stolipinovo’ and his life history as a homeless man in France, where he decides to leave shortly after suffering a work-related accident. The choice of a research case is dictated, on one hand, by the experience of the craftsman as a homeless person and, on the other, by his distinctive position as ‘The Carpenter of Stolipinovo’, which he occupies in the social space of the neighborhood. Secondly, this choice is dictated by the singularity and exclusivity of this experience, because, although homeless, this experience is undoubtedly marked by the presence of a place that he nevertheless inhabits, to which he returns several times, and which is maintained and renovated over time by the locals with whom he shares a common physical space. In this sense, the unprivileged position of the homeless, i.e. the lack of any opportunity to invest in the future, even the ability to plan in the short term, is more like a landmark vector of a biographical trajectory that serves as a starting point and, at the same time this moment of fractured experience, as the data shows, always is thought about relationally, because even in the position of a homeless person, at least according to the constructed narrative, he loses neither his distinctiveness nor his biographical illusio, contrary to what is expected, even though homelessness is thought of as one of the extreme forms of social vulnerability and social inequality. Hence the definition of his experience as a form of ‘elusive social vulnerability".

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