Youth homelessness in the world city: Displacement, Mobilities and the Day Centre

Dr Emma Jackson (Urban Studies, University of Glasgow)

4.00-5.30pm, Room 916, Adam Smith Building

Based on a multi-method ethnography of a super-diverse day centre for young people in central London - in various states of homelessness and from across the world, country and city - this paper brings global displacements and mobilities into an analysis of urban homeless spaces. The paper argues for contextualising spaces of homelessness within the social relations and flows of people that produce the ‘world city’ (Massey, 2007). Interpreting the day centre as an urban space embedded within an institutional framework and shaped by the pathways of those who use it, the paper takes three levels of analysis to unpack the day centre - the institutional context, the day centre as a global space, and the intersection of homeless organisations, forms of governance and mobilities. Pointing to a disjuncture between how homelessness is managed as a local issue in England and the complex mobilities of young homeless people, the paper argues that it is at this intersection of mobilities and the institutional framework that future im/mobilities are shaped.

All welcome.

The Sociology Seminar Series is supported by the MacFie Bequest, named after Professor Alec MacFie, Adam Smith Professor of Political Economy at the University from 1945 to 1958. 

Any enquiries about the seminar series can be addressed to: Andrew.Smith.2@glasgow.ac.uk

First published: 13 September 2012

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