Resumen de Pathways out of Homelessness inLos Angeles and Tokyo: MultilevelContexts of Limited Mobility amidAdvanced Urban Marginality
The widespread entrenchment of gaping urban inequality has aroused concern abouthow economic, demographic and (neoliberal) ideological globalization interacts withlocal conditions to shape its magnitude, manifestations and experiences. This articleexplores how the process of exiting homelessness is affected by an interaction of socialcontexts operating at multiple levels, from the global to the individual. I advance andassess a multilevel framework of exiting homelessness by combining comparison ofsecondary data at multiple social levels and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis oflongitudinal interview data from persons using transitional housing programs in LosAngeles and Tokyo. In the two cities, individual vulnerabilities and acculturation tohomelessness are superseded via different pathways out of homelessness. Pathways inLos Angeles rely on social and organizational ties amid a paucity of economicopportunities, whereas pathways in Tokyo use economic resources amid limited ties.Contrary to approaches that emphasize singular contexts driving marginality, Idemonstrate differing local impacts of globalization and the important and interactingroles of the state, organizational contexts of social service delivery and culturaldimensions of social capital. This points towards the utility of a new povertymanagement framework for understanding interventions addressing homelessness asfragmented, contradictory and contingent upon multiple contexts.
