Svetlana Stephenson
Crossing the Line. Vagrancy, Homelessness and Social Displacement in Russia.
Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006
How did people find themselves homeless in the Soviet Union? What forces
lead to homelessness in modern-day Russia? Why are homeless people almost
totally neglected in Russian society? Which lines do they cross to become
complete outsiders?
This pioneering book explores the experiences of homeless people in Russia
in the late Soviet period and during post-socialist transition. Through
their own stories, it introduces us to the hidden world of vagrants,
itinerant workers and the street homeless - roofless people living on the
streets, in cellars, in the lofts of apartment blocks, in train stations, in
rubbish dumps or in holes underground.
Using in-depth biographical interviews, the author documents the processes
of their displacement; the strategies they adopt in using the streets and
other spaces for survival and building social bonds; and the barriers which
block their escape from homelessness. These narratives are placed within a
framework of theoretical perspectives on social and spatial exclusion;
interaction between space and social identity, and the regimes of settlement
and social control. The structural causes of homelessness are discussed,
together with the criminological, legal and expert discourses that
constructed vagrants and the homeless as 'social waste' in the Soviet and
post-Soviet periods.
Svetlana Stephenson is a Senior Lecturer in International Comparative
Sociology at London Metropolitan University.
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