"I've been through a lot... more bad things than good things in life" - Women's Pathways into Homelessness in the Croatian Context

Abstract

The paper analyzes in detail the lives and experiences of women experiencing homelessness, with a special focus on their paths to homelessness and the 'turning points' that led to it. The research is based on qualitative materials collected as part of the CSRP project Exploring Homelessness and Pathways to Social Inclusion: A Comparative Study of Contexts and Challenges in Swiss and Croatian Cities (br. IZHRZO_180631/1), and is based on ethnographic fieldwork, participant observation and semi-structured and walk-along interviews that were conducted with homeless women in two Croatian cities. In addition to the explainations of the participants themselves, this research also analyzes their biographies in order to detect how and in what way various challenges permeated their lives and at some point led them to homelessness. The paper presents three case studies that provide a detailed insight into the complex combination of circumstances, experiences and events that lead women to homelessness. The heterogeneity of their paths is shown, and how the interaction and culmination of individual challenges and structural factors in the Croatian context can lead to the most extreme forms of homelessness.