Socio-Care Circuits for Homeless People in Buenos Aires' City: Social Representations and Practices

Summary

This work is part of an action-research funded by the University of Buenos Aires. Its aims were to investigate the life trajectories and the processes of identity construction in homeless people in the City of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and create a space for participation and collective reflection that facilitates the problematization of both these trajectories and socio-care circuits for homeless people. Using participative qualitative research, this work had three stages: (a) participatory diagnosis, (b) problematization and (c) first intervention. An intentional sample was selected of 10 organizations that were part of the healthcare offer for homeless people, and with a snowball sampling one of 18 homeless adults users of this offer, both men and women, who were in the streets for at least 3 years. Through interviews, focus groups, collective mapping, and the construction of a problem tree, and using grounded theory approach, it was found that interventions are organized according to certain social representations of the street situation, of the people themselves and of what is meant by "addressing the problem”. Based on these results, the limits and challenges of interventions with community-based approaches with homeless people are problematized, as well as relations between the University and the Community in the process of building knowledge.