Agency and insecurities in (re)making a sense of home amidst later life homelessness: towards a conceptual framing.

BACKGROUND AND

OBJECTIVES

While there are concerns about homelessness and accommodation insecurity in later life, scholarly understanding of whether and how older people currently in homelessness can achieve a sense of home remains underdeveloped. We investigate the role of personal agency and environmental conditions in how older people perceive and construct a sense of home, amidst aging, homelessness, and insecurity across the life course.

RESEARCH DESIGN AND

METHODS

An inductive qualitative approach is employed and draws data from one focus group and 24 life-course interviews involving 24 older men and five older women (50-74 years) experiencing homelessness in Ireland.

RESULTS

Five domain continua, through which older adult participants exerted agency to make and remake a sense of home were identified despite past and present dislocations and spatial life-course and structural forces. The findings capture a future orientated long-trajectory developmental process, where sense of home can serve as a potential outcome in a broader trajectory of hope, identity and wellbeing.

DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS: A conceptual frame is presented illustrating how individuals negotiated uncertainty, environmental insecurity and growing older to move closer to home. It also illustrates how policy development must be recalibrated to attend to these groups' voices, given the significant influence of structural factors on present conditions.