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A summary of Crisis’ latest research into the experiences of homeless women, undertaken by the Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research (CRESR) at Sheffield Hallam University

This thesis addresses the oft-neglected experiences of ‘homeless’ women. It explores how homelessness impacts on women’s identities and how this is negotiated and/or resisted. An integrated theoretical framework links homelessness and identity literature with feminist insights surrounding marginalised women.\ud By centring the experiences and identity-work of homeless women, this thesis contributes to bodies of work on homelessness, women and identity from a feminist perspective. The study advances knowledge of home and homelessness and the relationship between these supposedly binary concepts; and contributes to existing understandings of identity, in relation to marginalised women.\ud Findings are based on a combination of in-depth qualitative interviews, participant-produced photographs, and follow-up photo-elicitation interviews with twelve women accessing homelessness support services – hostels, supported housing projects, day-centres, and women’s centres –in a range of homelessness situations.\ud This research produced four significant findings. First, home and homelessness were experienced in broader senses than previously found. As home existed in a variety of states, women experienced homelessness in a myriad of ways: homelessness was thus expanded beyond the point of entry into homelessness services. Second, homelessness was felt as a comparative lack. Rather than feeling stigmatised because of their homelessness in and of itself, homelessness affected the women in that they saw housing as a measuring stick and came out lacking. Third, homelessness presented an opportunity for re-creation of self because of the challenges it raised. While previous literature states that the current homeless self is profaned, this study found women to praise the current self as reformed and wiser despite constraining social factors. Finally, this thesis emphasises the malleability of identity categories and argues that marginalisation is not an outright barrier to reflexivity and creativity. Homeless women performed other identities beyond their homelessness, and housing/home experiences are not fixed determinants of identity and self.

This thesis is an original contribution to key debates on the politicisation, governance and scale of 'the community' in contemporary society (Etzioni, 1996; Bourdieu, 1989; Giddens, 1984; Taylor, 2003). It contributes to knowledge on constitutional change and community development in three key ways.Firstly, findings from micro-geographical case studies in Wales are situated within global debates on the fragmentation of governance into networks, hierarchies and scales (Rhodes, 1997; Brenner, 2004; Gore, 2008). These complex and contested subjects are used to uncover the relationship between state and civil society using Multi Level Governance (Armstrong & Wells, 2005), theory on territorial rescaling and multi-scalar governance. These theories are encapsulated within one strand of the Strategic Relational Approach (Jessop, 2008) to understand the state. Use of theory in this way ensures that the findings add to wide-ranging and existing knowledge rather than replicating it.Secondly, the research was carried out at a significant time in Welsh political history. Under devolution Communities First is the first national area-based community development programme to be exclusively designed and implemented by Ministers elected to represent the people of Wales. The thesis explores the impact of devolution on community development from the perspective of those involved at different levels of governance; from Ministers with a Wales-wide remit to community groups in neighbourhoods. It also explores the influence of UK regeneration policy and actors during the late 1990s (SEU, 2001; Lawless, 2011).Thirdly, the research questions have developed directly from existing research on Communities First in Wales (Adamson & Bromilley, 2008). Published at the outset of this PhD the research provided an empirical base from which to develop a relevant investigation of the Communities First programme using the theoretical tools noted above.