Respondent
Theme
Children’s homelessness as a subculture in a modern Ukrainian society
Defence Date
Annotation
The theoretical and methodological approaches to the research of children’s
homelessness are examined in the present thesis. The sociological discourse of the
research of the specified phenomenon is allocated separately. The statement about the
necessity of recognition of homeless children is not only the object, but first of all the
subject of social relations, which form personal space, using particular practices, norms,
values.
On the basis of sociological and statistical information, the results of observation
of homeless children’s everyday life, the results of deep interviews with young people
from among former and present homeless children, the author has made the sociocultural
portrait of a homeless child. The present research provides an example of implementation
of the mixed methodology that allows to investigate the problem in a complex and to
determine the scale and specifics of children’s homelessness in modern conditions.
The detailed analysis of homeless children’s everyday life gives the reason to
examine children’s homelessness as a particular subculture or a specific form of
solidarization between homeless children that sets the new valuable vectors and promotes
the development of a street «we». The author characterizes the homeless children as a
separately existing subculture that differs in their own norms of life and behavioral rules,
the feature, that, on the one hand, is a relation to a world of childhood, but on the other
hand, is a relation to a criminal world.
Special attention is paid to a problem of adaptation and integration of young
people with their experience of homeless life to a «big society». On the basis of analysis of
deep biographical interviews the author provides life stories, survival strategies of young
people from among former and present homeless children.
On the basis of the research’s results the author outlines the main directions of
regulation of the problem of children’s homelessness on disciplinary measurements of its
implementation, taking into consideration the levels of prevention.
Key words: children’s homelessness, subculture, modern Ukrainian society,
criminal culture, children’s subculture.