Urban masculinity, contested spaces, and classed subcultures: young homeless men navigating downtown Ottawa, Canada

Abstract

This article seeks to address the lacuna in many academic and non-academic accounts of male homeless youth, which consistently overlook and thus fail to theorize the degree to which young homeless men’s experiences are shaped by gendered and classed youth subcultures. The theoretical contribution that this article seeks to make is to bring together culturally-infused analyses with a geographic focus on space and masculinity, in order to expand the repertoire of conceptual tools with which to understand young men’s experiences of homelessness in urban spaces. It does so through an empirical investigation of urban spatial navigations of young homeless and precariously housed men in Ottawa, Canada. Mobilizing the concept of territoriality, as developed by Phil Cohen of the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, alongside the Bourdieusian concept of classification struggles, the article ultimately seeks to demonstrate that there is an internal logic of practice to young men’s navigations of urban space under conditions of extreme inequality, one that seeks to reconcile the deep contradictions of neoliberalism. Simultaneously, such logics may also serve to reinscribe and reinforce their marginal positions in the city, by exposing them to extreme violence by rival urban groups, and leaving them more vulnerable to expanded criminalization by the state.

Keywords:

• Bourdieu
• classification struggles
• homelessness
• masculinity
• subcultures
• youth

Acknowledgements

Dr. Kennelly is grateful to the youth for their participation in the project, and the youth centre that helped facilitate access to youth participants. She would also like to acknowledge Dr. Valerie Stam and Lynette Schick for their invaluable research assistance during project fieldwork. Special thanks to Dr. David Farrugia, Dr. Megan Rivers-Moore, Dr. Erin Dej, and Dr. Stuart Poyntz for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. Thanks also are due to the anonymous reviewers and the editor of Gender, Place, and Culture. Any errors or omissions belong solely to the author.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

Funded by the Spencer Foundation's New Civics Initiative.

Notes on contributors

Jacqueline Kennelly

Jacqueline Kennelly is the author of Olympic Exclusions: Youth, Poverty, and Social Legacies (Routledge 2016), Citizen Youth: Culture, Activism, and Agency in a Neoliberal Era (Palgrave MacMillan, 2011), and the co-author (with J. Dillabough) of Lost Youth in the Global City: Class, Culture, and the Urban Imaginary (Routledge, 2010). She co-edited (with S. Poyntz) Phenomenology of Youth Cultures and Globalization: Lifeworlds and Surplus Meanings in Changing Times (Routledge 2015). Her work has also appeared in a number of international peer-reviewed journals.