This article reports a qualitative study of how homeless people visualize their life in hostels and on the streets of London. Using a photo-production technique, the research enabled participants to show their situation as well as to tell about their experiences. Participants were given cameras and asked to take photographs typical of their day as homeless people, this material being the subject of a subsequent interview. This provided both visual and text data that were analysed together so as to establish different engagements of the participants with the city and with domiciled people. Presenting the material from six of the participants, these different engagements are described with reference to issues of estrangement, exclusion and visualization employed as explanatory concepts. The article identifies and compares the different ways in which homeless people attempt not only to survive but also to 'make their home' in the city.

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This paper takes up the question of what it means to be a woman who lives on the streets and in hostels as a homeless person in London. Using qualitative data from three women respondents, the analysis focuses upon their reasons for becoming and staying homeless. We address issues concerning the women's perceptions of danger and safety on the streets, the way they construct their role as women in this situation and their options for alternative ways of living in the future. We point up the strategies used by these women to survive on the streets (to remain transient), and relate these to discussions of women's occupancy of public space and their scope to claim equal regard among women in general.

In Aotearoa/New Zealand unemployment is a continuing social concern that has been linked to a range of negative consequences, including various psychological and physical ailments. Whereas findings linking unemployment to such consequences are highly prevalent, few studies have explored people's experiences of unemployment. This article presents an analysis of 26 semistructured individual interviews with unemployed people in order to explore the social construction of unemployment. It is argued that the meaning of unemployment is in many respects analogous to what previous research on lay health beliefs has found regarding the meaning of illness. Prominent themes from literature on the meaning of illness are used to inform an analysis of the meaning of unemployment. The implications of constructing unemployment as an illness are explored in relation to the assignment of cause and responsibility and to the ways the unemployed are socially positioned. Tactics used by participants to preserve a sense of moral worth in response to the stigma of unemployment provide a key focal point for this article.