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This article explores the nuanced connections between homelessness and incarceration as told through life stories of homeless men in Trenton, New Jersey. A recurrent theme in the stories was the experience of incarceration. This cycle of male homelessness and incarceration has its origins in the structural conditions of poverty, discrimination, and unemployment in Trenton. It is self-replicating because of a cultural process in which people learn and repeat how to engage with the world. Men copy other men; this is how they learn gender. If fathers or other positive male role models are absent, men are prone to learn gender from idealized, hypermasculine images that feed into the cycle of male homelessness and incarceration. When incarcerated men leave prison and return home to fatherless families and impoverished inner city neighborhoods, this has an adverse impact on them, which has an impact on the dynamics of those families and neighborhoods.

In Chambersburg, a neighborhood in Trenton, New Jersey, an ethnic transition is under way. Just several decades ago, the district was a solidly Italian enclave. Today, the few remaining Italians must contend with an influx of new immigrants from Latin America. The transition from Italian to Latino has been infused with conflict that is not immediately obvious but rather lingers just under the surface. Add to this already tense situation the activities of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which has been conducting frequent immigration raids, banging on doors with deportation orders for individual Guatemalans in the wee hours of the morning. This article explores the implications of residency status in a post–PATRIOT Act United States and argues that it is fundamental to understanding ethnic relations both among migrants from different nations and between immigrants and nonimmigrants.

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