“Since home, since the cradle, since forever”: violence and homeless women

Abstract

Homeless women suffer specific and gendered violations and vulnerabilities. This study aims to analyze the different manifestations and incidences of violence that affects them. We conducted ethnographic field research as well as nine in-depth interviews. Physical and sexual violence proved to be the main triggers for going to the streets but not its main cause, since they took place on lives already devastated by structural and intersectional violence. Daily lives on the streets revealed itself as well-worn by explicit and veiled violence and by the submission to violence as a way of survival. It is worth stressing that gender, race and poverty are enacted as authorization for violence on these women’s bodies and subjectivities.