The Contested Homeless Body: An Embodied Approach to Researching Women’s Experiences of Homelessness

Abstract

Homeless women have been underrepresented in research surrounding homelessness, resulting in their experiences and needs being overlooked. This thesis takes a gendered approach to researching homelessness, using the body as the conceptual framework to build a deeper understanding of women’s experiences of homelessness. An embodied approach makes space for the messiness, emotions, feelings, identities and performances of homelessness to be brought to light; experiences which have rarely been attended to within geography to date. This thesis argues that taking an embodied approach allows a richer picture of women’s homelessness to be built. It considers how homeless women experience violence, emotions and trauma; and how these experiences are embodied and shape women’s perceptions of their self and bodies. It explores how homeless women experience disempowerment and low self-esteem in the lives, considering the lack of power they have in reproductive decisions; clothing and grooming their bodies; and the impact this has on their sense of self. The thesis also presents an additional perspective, presenting homeless women as agentic and resilient. It considers how this agency might be enacted through particular performances and presentations of their bodies; and through engaging in different home-making practices. This thesis deepens understandings of the challenges women face when experiencing homelessness, whilst also challenging understandings of homeless women that consider them as powerless victims of their circumstances. This thesis argues that an embodied approach not only allows for an alternative reading of homeless women that presents them as agentic and resourceful; but it opens up exciting opportunities for Geographers to explore new and different approaches to homelessness.