ABSTRACT

Despite years of policy attention and increasing intervention, the numbers of young people experiencing homelessness in Australia continue to increase. Previous meta-theoretical approaches to understanding homelessness amongst young people are largely unable to explain the conditions which enable young people to exit homelessness and maintain stable housing. We put forward Critical Realism as a way of overcoming the limitations of the main approaches which have been used to date: Empiricism, Interpretivism, and Interactionism/Epidemiology. The meta-theoretical assumptions made by Critical Realism can allow researchers to more robustly explain what enables young people to exit homelessness and maintain stable housing by identifying what it is about the structures and mechanisms, or the absence of these structures and mechanisms, which leads to this outcome. By using a Critical Realist approach, we hope to be able to contribute to more robust explanations of how young people exit homelessness and maintain housing.

摘要

尽管多年的政策关注和越来越多的干预，澳大利亚无家可归的年轻人数量仍在继续增加。以前理解年轻人无家可归的元理论方法在很大程度上无法解释使年轻人摆脱无家可归并维持稳定住房的条件。我们提出批判现实主义作为克服迄今为止使用的主要方法的局限性的一种方式：经验主义、解释主义和互动主义/流行病学。批判现实主义提出的元理论假设可以让研究人员更强有力地解释是什么使年轻人能够摆脱无家可归并通过确定结构和机制是什么来维持稳定的住房，或者这些结构和机制的缺失，这导致了这个结果。通过使用批判现实主义方法，我们希望能够为年轻人如何摆脱无家可归和维持住房做出更强有力的解释。