Marginal Arrangements: Homelessness, Mental Illness, and Social Relations. Executive Summary

摘要

A multi-method, ethnographically-centered approach was used to understand how homeless individuals whom service providers label mentally ill collude in their own management and surmount their marginality. Field observations from five nontraditional programs for homeless mentally ill in New York City were supplemented by network analyses of seventy-four homeless clients. The finding of relatively large networks contradicts the disaffiliation thesis of homelessness. But network summary statistics masked a multiplicity of social configurations. Family and 'homed' friends, peers, and service providers comprised almost equal proportions of the networks. Gender, ethnicity, and spatial correlates shaped network patterns. Although homeless persons sought most basic resources from service providers, they were by no means totally service-dependent. Observational data contradicted the quantitative network finding of staff-client non-reciprocity. The management of homelessness in fact emerged as a constantly negotiated order produced by client-worker conflict over program goals. Workers concealed the mental health nature of their services to attract potential clients. To understand movement out of homelessness, a social margin hypothesis was tested against the 'needs perspective' of service providers, using discriminant analysis and a linear restriction test. Having entitlements in process, social competency, and social margin (a composite of social class and nonmarginal network) significantly discriminated persons who obtained housing during a six-month period from those who did not.