Homelessness, Social Exclusion and Health: Global Perspectives, Local Solutionss, Fiona Cuthill

Abstract

This monograph is written by Dr Fiona Cuthill, Senior Lecturer in Nursing Studies at the University of Edinburgh. The first chapter begins with the image of cardboard ‘mattresses’ in front of marble doorways, arguing that people sleeping rough in urban spaces are a familiar sight and the losers of global capitalism. Rough sleepers are constructed as being marginalised local citizens and undocumented destitute migrants, who are ‘othered’ as ‘strangers on the streets’, outsiders in society and a consequence of global and local inequalities. The second chapter discusses homelessness in the context of glocalisation (see Livolts and Bryant (2017) in social work), urbanisation and neo-liberal governmentality, noting that all rough sleepers (as the visible homeless) have the same deteriorating health. The third chapter covers the physical, emotional and mental health of forced migrants and asylum seekers at different stages of their journey, focusing on the health needs of unaccompanied minors and pregnant women and children traumatised in war through gender-based sexual and family violence. It highlights the failures of local service systems in the UK (and across the world) that force people who have been refused asylum (undocumented migrants) into homelessness, without any access to health care. Building on this, Chapter 7 presents an insightful interview with clinical psychologist Adam Burley about childhood adversity, the centrality of relationships and normative assumptions, deficit language and labels (such as ‘personality disorders’) in service provision, advocating for a relational model of health and social care. Although, at times, this book conflates rough sleeping and homelessness, it does engage with contested service responses, definitions and political representations of homelessness, asylum seekers, refugees and forced migrants.