The symbolic burden of homelessness Towards a theory of youth homelessness as embodied subjectivity

Young people's subjective experience of homelessness is constituted by particular social processes which to this point have not been explicitly theorized. This article draws on qualitative interviews with young people who have experienced or are experiencing homelessness in order to argue that homelessness carries a symbolic burden, the acknowledgement of which is crucial to understanding the process of embodied subjectivity for young people who have this experience. Popular understandings construct those who experience homelessness as irresponsible, passive and obscene. Young people are aware of this, and this knowledge has consequences for the process of subjectivity for these young people. This article draws on conceptual contributions from Bourdieu and Massumi to theorize the nature of the symbolic burden of homelessness and reflect on the issues involved in understanding the process of subjectivity in the context of this kind of inequality.