CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2013
| Author | Ámon, Katalin |
|---|---|
| Title | Failed women and illegitimate citizens: The transformations of the private sphere and the gendered citizenship of homeless women in Budapest |
| Summary | This ethnographic research in a shelter for homeless women in Budapest aims to broaden the perspective of feminist political theories about citizenship showing that their concept of citizenship is largely based on the access to private sphere which poor women do not dispose of. First, I argue that the welfare system in form of individual assistance is aimed at the normalization of homeless women resulting in transparent privacy and therefore in a reduced private sphere. Then I explain how the lack of material resources forces women in to the economy of intimacy of the shelter and leads to the loss of ownership of their own body. In the last chapter, I analyze how homeless women’s transparent privacy and the economy of intimacy transform homeless women’s citizenship who are perceived as both failed women and illegitimate citizens because of their lack of domestic sphere. Contrary to “culture of poverty” discourses, however, I point out that homeless women’s transformed private sphere does not mean that they identify with a homeless “subculture”, but espouse to dominant social norms to make a distinction between themselves and other homeless women through discourses of voluntary and undeserving homeless people. |
| Supervisor | Cerwonka Allaine |
| Department | Gender Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2013/amon_katalin.pdf |
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