International Critical Perspectives on Homelessness

Homelessness is obviously a global problem. It has been a major focus of the UN-sponsored conferences Habitat I (1987) and Habitat II (1996). Reports from 144 countries for Habitat I demonstrated that over one billion people worldwide lived without adequate shelter of which at least 40 million were estimated to be homeless. Given the increased austerity conditions imposed by governments and international lending agencies as well as economic and political upheavals, this figure is sure to have increased dramatically. Homelessness and attitudes toward homelessness take different forms in developed and developing countries and from nation to nation, but the global dimensions of homelessness are accentuated by the economic and political disparities among nations. More and more refugees are mixing with displaced people from local communities in an ever-expanding series of global population flows. Understanding and addressing this new development requires more than the narrow, nationally-based studies that comprise most of the literature on the problem of homelessness. The present volume attempts to provide cross-cultural analysis by bringing together scholars from a variety of countries and investigating the operations of certain market economies, state policies, and community practices that contribute to the marginalization of large segments of the world's population as well as private and governmental remediation efforts.