The Social Organization of Youth Experiencing Homelessness in Edmonton, Alberta

• Author / Creator

  Puddu, Cynthia

• This dissertation used Institutional Ethnography (IE) to explore the experiences of street involved youth in Edmonton and to uncover how institutional, organizational, and social mechanisms shape their experiences. Drawing from Community-Based Participatory Research methods, I collaborated with Edmonton youth living in homelessness to explore their experiences of living on the streets during extensive downtown revitalization. This research used observations, interviews, focus groups and Photovoice methodologies to understand how youth enter into homelessness and their experiences once homeless. Youth participants identified many social issues they encounter daily. One prominent issue that youth encountered when navigating the streets of Edmonton was that they were often banned from local shelters for various reasons. Because of these bans, youth were often placed in unsafe situations such as sleeping in garbage bins, sleeping alone on the streets or turning to survival sex to get shelter. Through this dissertation, I sought to understand how service bans happen and the conditions that lead to youth banning. In exploring this phenomenon, I found that banning practices became the lens through which to understand and connect systemic issues that cause and perpetuate homelessness to the experiences of this specific group of youth. This Institutional Ethnography shows how the experiences of youth, including banning, are connected and organized by the socio-political ideologies of neoliberalism and colonialism that exist in Edmonton and beyond. By focusing on one specific issue in one organization, this IE illustrates how to connect larger systems organization to youth’s lived experiences.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Institutional Ethnography
  • Youth Homelessness
  • Neoliberalism
  • Financialization of Housing
  • Banning

• Graduation date

  Fall 2020

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Doctor of Philosophy

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-atc9-ms86

• License

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