ABSTRACT
In the 1990s, UNICEF estimated that more than 80 million children and youth lived ‘unaccompanied’ in the world, mostly in ‘developing’ nations, but with large numbers of the homeless also living on the streets in the ‘developed’ world (Van der Ploeg and Scholte 1997). Precise counts of the size of the homeless youth population are impossible to obtain, in part because the population changes from day to day as some young people end their current period of homelessness while others begin theirs. Population counts are also influenced by other factors including inconsistent definitions of homelessness and youth, the political goals of governments and other data collectors, the expense undertaken to gather data, and the willingness of youth to count themselves as homeless. As a result, there is considerable variation in assessments of the homeless population. For example, estimates of the size of the homeless youth population in the United States in the late 1980s and early 1990s range from 100,000 to 750,000 (ibid.). These issues notwithstanding, it is widely acknowledged that the number of homeless youth throughout the world has increased dramatically in the past 40 years. Although researchers have used a variety of definitions when studying homeless youth,
most approaches agree that the absence of stable shelter and separation from family or guardians are key components of homelessness. Some definitions include specifications of the amount of time without shelter, the security of the available accommodation (e.g., sleeping in parks versus hostels) or the immediate reason for the homeless experience (e.g., whether youth left home voluntarily or were ‘thrown out’ by their family). Other approaches emphasize the extent to which individuals identify themselves as homeless. Some perspectives distinguish between homeless and street youth, reserving the latter term for youth who spend large amounts of time participating in street culture, regardless of whether or not they are homeless. However youth homelessness is defined, most researchers agree that it is a changing state in which young people move between living at home, being homeless and residing in some type of institutional setting such as foster care, juvenile detention, or jail. In addition, while on the streets, most youth move from one type of accommodation to another (e.g., back and forth between sleeping in a
shelter or with friends). This instability leads some researchers to describe homelessness as a process – rather than a state of being (Wingert et al. 2005) – and to conceptualize its various elements as parts of a ‘life cycle’ of homelessness (Auerswald and Eyre 2002). While homeless youth cycle through settings and accommodations, they also negotiate
the transition from adolescence to adulthood. However, variation in the definitions of youth complicates our understanding of this transition. The term youth typically refers to the period between childhood and adulthood, but neither of these stages is clearly bound by specific ages. As a result, some researchers use a legal definition to demarcate youth, while others adopt the client age limits set by service organizations, or draw on definitions derived from research or theory. In this chapter, we briefly review some key problems in making sense of the transition to
adulthood. We then narrow our focus to homeless youth and review research that examines how these adolescents become homeless and the factors that help them exit the street. The transition into and out of homelessness is inextricably combined with the transition into adulthood. By definition, homeless youth are already involved in one of the common markers of adulthood – independent living – and in many cases, are involved in several others. Yet, only a few studies provide any analysis of the transition to adulthood among homeless youth, and this research mostly concerns Canada, the United States and Europe.
Research on the transition from adolescence to adulthood typically assumes that societies define distinct indicators that signify the end of adolescence and the start of adult life. Common demographic markers include independent living, completing education, finding full-time work, and forming a family (Mouw 2005). However, in the past 30 years, many of these transitions have become delayed, and for some youth are realized only in their late twenties or early thirties – a time of life that extends far beyond common conceptualizations of adolescence. The sequencing of the key transitions has also changed: fewer youth now follow traditional patterns in which the completion of one’s education is followed by full-time work, marriage and childbirth (ibid.). Indeed, some scholars argue that the period between the late teens and mid-twenties has replaced adolescence as the ‘most turbulent’ for young people (Fussell and Furstenburg 2005). A second problem with a focus on conventional signifiers of adulthood is that it often
ignores the interpretive dimension or subjectivity of these markers. A growing body of research demonstrates that young adults vary in their interpretations of which events under which conditions signify adulthood (Brannen et al. 2002; Macmillan 2007); moreover, for many young people, adulthood is indicated by a combination of psychological achievements, such as being more independent, responsible and sensitive to others. As a result, some scholars suggest that a ‘package’ of social roles and personal qualities, rather than specific transitions, signifies entry into adulthood (Macmillan 2007). The notion of a package highlights the diverse identities, or ‘subjectivities’ that influ-
ence adolescents’ interpretations of adulthood. As they adopt, modify, and replace the multiple identities that adolescence and adulthood involve, youth reinterpret their status. For example, many adolescents make several of the transitions commonly associated with adulthood (e.g., finish their education, obtain full-time work and establish an independent household) and change many of their identities to reflect their new adult self, only to move back home, stop working and subsequently change how they view themselves.
