Sopravvivere in strada. Elementi di sociologia della persona senza dimora

Abstract

The street-and the unpredictabilities that characterize it-imposes, on those who inhabit it, continuous transformations and adaptations. Weather conditions, the action of law enforcement, the interaction between people in disarray after past and present traumas and fractures, situations of severe distress following difficult resocialization paths, etc., constitute the scenario of relationships for survival on the street. It is in such a context that the homeless develop their strategies of adaptation, in a continuous daily struggle for the procurement of goods essential to their mental and physical health. Thus emerges from the street social network the figure of a creative actor who selects and manipulates symbols and norms to “construct,” often improvising, a whole series of activities and strategies that remain largely invisible to those who do not belong to that world. The attempt of this book is to “enter” the hidden world of street life, to try to understand a hitherto little known reality. An attempt to mediate between the opposite poles of “street” and “normal society.” Otherwise, the only, extreme form of contact between “normal society” and the “marginal society” of the homeless will always remain that of control and repression.