The present article focuses on one of the marginalized
social groups in our country – young homeless
people – placing their social status within the context
of the risk of permanent disintegration of a social
group vulnerable to intergenerational poverty. In
relation to this, the article includes the concept of
the underclass and ponders its various connotations.
It describes contemporary phenomena which pose
an ever greater risk for young people, and focuses
primarily on the transition into the world of employment
and the inclusion into the health care system. For
purposes of illustration it relies on two studies of
homelessness conducted heretofore, “Homelessness
in Ljubljana”/»Brezdomstvo v Ljubljani« (Dekleva
and Razpotnik, 2007) and “Homelessness, health, and
access to health care services”/»Brezdomstvo, zdravje
in dostopnost zdravstvenih storitev« (Razpotnik and
Dekleva, 2009). The results reveal a trend, whereby
young homeless individuals have on average a lower
level of education even when compared to the larger
category of homeless people, and none of the young
homeless individuals taking part in the study (2009) had been permanently employed at the time the study was
conducted. Another salient issue is also the high rate of
expulsion from school – homeless youths are more than
twice as likely to have been expelled from school as the
entire sample group of homeless individuals. For these
reasons homeless youths in Slovenia fit the concept of
“status zer0 youth”.
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