Emerging Adulthood in Time and Space: The Geographic Context of Homelessness

Periods of uncertainty: The experience of at‐risk young adult Arabs during the transition to adulthood in the wake of COVID‐19

“…The goal of the present study was to investigate the challenges and barriers experienced by at‐risk young adult Arabs during the COVID‐19 pandemic. It was informed by the emerging adulthood theory: a theory that views emerging adulthood as a critical period of transition, during which young people are tasked with establishing adult identities and striving for stability in domains such as housing, employment, career, marriage and new social networks (Arnett, 2004 ; Berzin et al, 2014 ; Williams & Sheehan, 2015 ). In line with this theory, we wished to gain an understanding of the life experiences of at‐risk young adult Arabs that might limit or challenge this primary transition‐to‐adulthood task during a global crisis.…”

Striving and Dreaming: A Grounded Theory of the Transition to Adulthood for Cross-Systems Youth

“…Emerging adulthood is regarded as the developmental period spanning ages 18 to 24 or 25 (Arnett, 2015). A growing base of theoretical and empirical literature denotes emerging adulthood as a critical period of transition, in which young people are tasked with establishing adult identities and striving for stability in domains such as work, relationships, housing, and social life (Arnett, 2015, 2016; Berzin, Singer, & Hokanson, 2014; Williams & Sheehan, 2015). As Arnett (2015) and others have postulated, emerging adulthood is distinct from both adolescence and later adulthood and is marked by characteristics including identity exploration, self-focus, a sense of feeling in-between, and optimism about future possibilities.…”

“…Given the vulnerabilities that cross-systems youth face, researchers have also called for greater attention to the resilience demonstrated by this population (Burt & Paysnick, 2012; Hines, Merdinger, & Wyatt, 2005; Williams & Sheehan, 2015). The concept of resilience in the context of youth development directs attention to the pathways or factors that shape positive outcomes for young people, despite exposure to risk or adversity (Burt & Paysnick, 2012; Zimmerman et al, 2013).…”

“…However, most studies in this review were based on samples with broad age ranges, with children as young as four included in some studies, and most of the studies of emerging adults did not analyze findings from a developmental perspective. Studies of this population that have used a developmental lens point to homeless emerging adults’ use of both internal and external resources for survival and coping, illuminating young adults’ emphasis on relationships with other homeless peers as critical to their mental health and daily survival (Thompson et al, 2016; Wenzel et al, 2012; Williams & Sheehan, 2015).…”

Somewhere to be permanent for a minute: Time and space perceptions of older adult men experiencing chronic homelessness in Detroit

“…The National Alliance to End Homelessness recognizes differences in homelessness in different geographies, as outlined in their Geography of Homelessness report (2009) and researchers have concluded that attention to differential geographies is essential to understanding subpopulations of homelessness (Cloke et al, 2001; DeVerteuil, May, & Mahs, 2009; Lawrence, 1995; Parr, Stevenson, Fyfe, & Woolnough, 2015). Accordingly, researchers have recently applied a human geographical approach to begin to add to the homelessness literature in the areas of risk assessment (Reilly, 1994), social networks (Rowe & Wolch, 1990), perceptions of time and space (Van Doorn, 2010), and an integrated multidisciplinary model to further research in this special area (Williams & Sheehan, 2015). To accommodate the themes of time and space that emerged from our data, we similarly applied a time–space geography theoretical framework.…”