Paper short abstract:

This paper presents how the notion of home is understood, defined and described by homeless people in Croatia and how family circumstances, socio-economic conditions and power dynamics in the present, past and future inform the ways in which people understand the concept of home.

Paper long abstract:

Research has shown that home is a complex, multidimensional and intangible concept that can refer to a place, space, feelings, relationships, identities, practices or states of being. Studies have also shown that one can learn a great deal about what home signifies by studying what this concept means for someone that has been deprived or lacks home. The aim of this paper is to present how the notion of home is understood, defined and described by homeless people in Croatia. As home operates at a variety of overlapping scales, this paper shows how family circumstances, socio-economic conditions and power dynamics in the present, past and future inform the ways in which people understand the concept of home. Special focus will be on the impacts of institutionalised/foster care as well as violence and abuse throughout their life course trajectories. Findings show that socially marginalised homeless people experience home in very different ways from how it is conventionally portrayed. Ethnographic data also reveals that homeless women and men tend to have different notions and understandings of home.