Gimme shelter! Investigating the social service interface from the standpoint of youth

Abstract

Using institutional ethnography, I demonstrate how one young man's efforts to find housing are shaped in relation to a complex institutional maze through which the immigration, child welfare, social assistance, and sheltering systems are linked. My goal is to show how a particular person's narrative can be used to illuminate the general organisation of the bureaucratic world. In this article, I explain how youth homelessness occurs against a complex backdrop of relations – relations that are obscured from the standpoint of a young person who simply lacks a secure place to sleep.