Routledge Youth Homelessness and Survival Sex: Intimate Relationships and Gendered Subjectivities (Youth, Young Adulthood and Society)

Survival sex, commonly understood to be the exchange of sex for material support, is a practice that is associated with young homeless women. However, such a narrow definition of survival sex fails to recognise the multiple, complex, and coexisting motivations of young homeless women for engaging in intimate relationships in post-industrial capitalist society. In Youth Homelessness and Survival Sex, Watson’s insightful analysis of personal narratives reveals how young homeless women are exposed to situations in which survival can be impeded or assisted by playing out specific gender roles. Indeed, in identifying and contesting the dominant social discourses that young homeless women draw upon to frame their experiences of intimate affairs, Watson challenges the reader to understand how gendered subjectivities are produced and performed through heteronormative relationships. This enlightening book is vital in showing that homelessness is not a gender-neutral phenomenon and that there are gender-specific processes and practices involved in the navigation of poverty, violence, and social exclusion. Youth Homelessness and Survival Sex will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as postdoctoral researchers, interested in fields such as Homelessness, Youth Studies, Social Work, and Gender Studies. Review Young women’s homelessness is often hidden from view – not showing up in official statistics nor in popular representations of ‘rough sleepers’. In this important and original new study, Juliet Watson vividly illuminates young women’s experiences. In doing so she makes us question our understandings of both homelessness and of transactional sex, opening up nuanced ways of thinking about the intimate relationships women build in order to survive.Rosalind Gill, Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis, City University of London, UKIn Youth Homelessness and Survival Sex, Juliet Watson offers a compelling and confronting account of how young women face, understand, and manage the risks they face in homelessness. Through exceptional empirical research, deep theoretical expertise, and sensitive engagement with experiences of poverty, gendered violence, and social exclusion, Watson illuminates how these young women make strategic use of heteronormative femininity in their search for security, survival, and resources. This is an important and valuable book that reinforces the critical importance of gender analysis of precarious lives. JaneMaree Maher, Director, Centre for Women's Studies and Gender Research, Monash University, AustraliaIn this fascinating and disturbing book, Juliet Watson provides us with a scholarly yet unflinching examination of the reality of survival sex for young homeless women. She shines much needed light on a topic that is too often referred to in passing, and seldom given the in-depth consideration it deserves.Suzanne Fitzpatrick, Professor of Housing and Social Policy in the Institute for Social Policy, Housing, Environment and Real Estate (I-SPHERE), Heriot-Watt University, UK About the Author Juliet Watson is a lecturer in the School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, at RMIT University, Australia.