[Capacity to act on its life and inflexion of biographical lines: the point of view of homeless women.].
To think of homelessness as a process opens the path to two questions. How can one prevent this disqualification process to arrive at its ultimate end? (the fact of being on the street with an identity of a homeless person)? One then thinks of prevention. How can one (re)store a reversed process allowing to modify the condition of homelessness? The issue of (re)integration or (re)affiliation is then raised. The answer to these questions cannot be limited to the sole reversal of general or particular processes having led to homelessness. In this article, the authors are concerned with the second question: the unfolding of an inflexion process of homelessness. This transformation process is not organized according to a linear and progressive model but is rather developed within the intertwining of personal essays, positive experiences and significant events entailing biographical inflexions in a way reformatting life's history. The material used in the analysis is constituted of homeless women's discourses (31non-directive interviews). The authors present distinctive forms of representations of action within a typology including three figures: 1) fatalism; 2) powerlessness; 3) appropriation.
Laberge
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Morin
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Roy
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Rozier
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