ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines a conceptual framework for understanding the construction of gendered subjectivities within the context of homelessness. This is developed through a dialogical engagement between Pierre Bourdieu’s social capital theory and Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity. This perspective provides a constructive foundation for a relational framework that innovatively explains the embodiment of gendered subjectivities through practices and transactions associated with young women’s experiences of intimate relationships and survival sex within the homeless sphere. A specific focus on how feminine capital is mobilised consciously and unconsciously through a system of exchange value demonstrates how young women form bodily alliances with men to manage the privation of homelessness.
