Please join the City, Society and Space workshop on Wednesday, January 21st, in SS 401 from 4:30-5:50 to hear Amanda Michelle Jones, PhD Student at SSA present her paper, “Assessing the Invisibility of Homeless Youth”.
The current paper is a beginning exploration of youth’s levels of engagement in and disengagement from society. Guided by stigmatization theory, philosophy of place, exploration consists of content analysis of existing video blogs (vlogs) collected from Invisible People, a U.S.-based nonprofit organization that features short videos of people sharing their experiences of homelessness in the hopes of “changing the way we think about people experiencing homelessness” (Invisible People, 2013a). The paper seeks to identify some of youth’s motives for engagement or lack thereof, for example: accessing social services versus bartering on the streets; obtaining traditional employment versus informal means of securing income; or continuing educational pursuits versus train hopping. Particular attention is paid to homeless youth’s efforts to be “seen” versus remain invisible and what that means to the youth, as well as deliberate attempts to make homeless youth invisible. Implications for future research are also discussed.
Food and drink will be provided. We hope to see you there!