How Can Educational Research Assume an Intersectional Approach? A Case Study on Homelessness in Brescia.

Led by the Center for Studies on Family and Childhood Education (CesPeFI) of Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, between September 2022 and October 2023, the study-case “Compagni di strada” (Road Companions) aimed to investigate the specific interstitial phenomenon of homelessness in Brescia urban context (Northern Italy). Since homeless people’s life is characterized by multiple and mixed forms of emargination (both material, concerning lack of job, home, economic resources, health, and not-material, concerning lack of familiar relationships, friendships or work-relationships, reaching the most severe grade of social exclusion, such as homeless), educational research approaches should assume an intersectional point of view in order to recognize mechanisms of exclusion and social injustice at the base of “poverty careers” that results in homelessness. In particular, “Compagni di strada” study made use of a qualitative methodological framework – the ethnographic one – in order to increase ways and opportunites to intercept and make visible the many invisible subjects involved in such specific interstitial dynamics, intersectional contexts and processes which characterize the phenomenon. In fact, the study aimed to investigate the “sub-culture” of homeless people within Brescia geographical area, exploring the following aspects: • “sliding mechanisms” and exclusion dynamics; • distinctive features of homelessness’ condition; • way-out mechanisms / elements of personal resilience; • hierarchy of homeless people’s priorities. Also, the research project explored knowledges and practices gained by social workers employed in Brescia’s various services for homeless people – the value of their job is often as invisible as homeless people’s life. The results confirmed that the choice of specific educational approaches plays a decisive role in contending the reproduction of mechanisms of selection and exclusion, especially when it embraces an interconnected perspective, in relation with contexts, people and social and territorial variables, such homelessness requires: as a matter of fact, according to the plenty of the interviewed social workers, only a multidisciplinar and interconneted approach seems to grant a functional taking charge of homeless people. Since this population lives in complex conditions of social unrest, very often correlated to over kinds of criticities (such as health and mental deseases, drug addiction, alcoholism, troubles with justice, etc.), the social workers – as well as the most recent scientific literature and welfare policies suggest – declare that only a multidisciplinar approach to people experiencing homelessness can take care of the many dimensions and challanges of their condition. Any other kind of approach risks to fail and, moreover, to reproduce mechanisms of exclusion and inequality, since it won’t consider homeless men/women involved in the specific interstitial dynamics, intersectional contexts and processes that lead to homelessness. To conclude, an intersectional research approach can contribute to contrasting the reproduction of exclusion and inequality thank to a sort of “advocacy” function, as it helps to make more visible what often is kept invisible.