Magdalena Mostowska

• Doctor of Philosophy
• University of Warsaw

Homelessness as a distinct social problem is a relatively recent social construct. Many women are thought to experience so-called ‘hidden homelessness’, which is said to be the cause of their under-representation in the data. However, data now show a higher proportion of women among those experiencing homelessness. In addition, current definitions...

Forty-seven years. The mean age at death. A number of cases are listed next to causes: illness 73, traffic accidents 20, violence 19, overdose 16, drowning 14, hypothermia 14, suicide 12. That is how the federation of organisations in Italy (FIOPSD, 2022) is reporting the number of deaths of people experiencing home-lessness: "205 deaths in 206 day...

In 2020 in Belgium the coronavirus crisis generated a widespread solidarity between the housed and the homeless. This paper adopts a policy assemblage approach to investigate policy responses to the pandemic with regards to actions, discourses and spatial materialities around homelessness. Three areas of contingent reassembling emerged from the ana...

It has been a couple of decades since attempts have been made to measure the extent of homelessness at national levels in Europe. While these counts are essential for public policymaking, producing such statistics also (re)produces power-knowledge. The definitions and categories used in homelessness surveys indicate how it is understood as a social...

This article discusses the results of fieldwork conducted among physically homeless Polish migrants in Oslo, Norway. I focus on the social networks that are a part of the migrants' social capital, and which should ideally prevent them from a state of ‘rooflessness’. I present the narratives of these Polish rough-sleepers in Oslo and analyse their l...

Zaczęliśmy rejestrację! Zapraszamy do udziału w Konferencji, której poprzednie edycje umożliwiły wymianę wiedzy i doświadczeń naukowców z kluczowych ośrodków naukowych w Polsce. W prezentacjach i dyskusjach uczestniczyli również młodzi naukowcy (doktorzy i doktoranci). W tym roku staramy się położyć nacisk nie tylko na warstwę merytoryczną (sesję...

Review essay of two Irish reports on homeless mortality.

Young adults experiencing homelessness in Poland

Only a few minutes into my first post-lockdown night in a movie theatre, the main character of Nomadland, a 60-year-old or so Fern, played by Frances McDormand, explains: "I'm not homeless, I'm houseless. That's not the same thing, right?"

This article examines the life stories of two young Polish women who have faced severe marginalization and homelessness. The main aim of this article is to investigate how the notions of (in)visibility and (im)mobility are shaping participants' everyday lives and life stories they tell. Using concepts drawn from social sciences, as well as cultural...

This article investigates the structural underpinnings of gender dissimilarities in homelessness from a comparative perspective. The Gender Dissimilarity Index is introduced as a simple measure for quantifying the unevenness of the distribution of men and women across the ETHOS-light categories. Three gendered aspects of the welfare state are consi...

The question of mobile Roma beggars in Europe has been analysed in terms of securitization, racialization, and deportability. These people have been hailed as ‘abject’ or ‘failed’ citizens, the problem of race being made largely invisible. In the Swedish context, the category of race does not emerge in overt form, and Swedes generally imagine thems...

In this paper, we introduce the concept of Family Housing Pathways to analyse the dynamics of a housing situation within the family context. It is an attempt to overcome some shortcomings of previous studies, to identify how housing resources are managed between households within families, and to recognise the gendered and temporal dimensions of in...

This article examines the daily routine in crisis accommodation for young women in Poland, investigating the hidden curriculum that includes highly gendered norms and expectations regarding residents. The article considers local crisis centres and state-funded Specialist Centres for Victims of Domestic Violence as well as Single Mothers' Homes, whi...

This paper presents the most important findings from a research project on women's homelessness in Poland, demonstrating that most Polish studies on homelessness fail to acknowledge its gender dimension, which remains unproblematized and unseen in the wider context of women's position in society. Up until now feminist theorizing, and intersectional...

The article describes the approach and method of Family Housing Pathways. This process of gathering and presenting data makes it possible to include the extended family's housing resources, the management of these resources, and the transformations of households within a family. Twenty-eight Family Housing Pathways were gathered and collected as pa...

The article examines interpretations of freedom of movement and access to social assistance within the EU Directive 2004/38. Examples of EU migrants’ homelessness are shown to demonstrate the confusing circularity in the regulations. The paper goes on to the development of local governments’ and voluntary organizations’ practice of limiting support...

The article examines interpretations of freedom of movement and access to social assistance within the EU Directive 2004/38. Examples of EU migrants’ homelessness are shown to demonstrate the confusing circularity in the regulations. The paper goes on to the development of local governments’ and voluntary organizations’ practice of limiting support...

This article is an extended review of two recent books: Matthew Desmond's "Evicted. Poverty and Profit in the American City" and Beata Siemieniako's "Repr y waty zując Polskę. Historia wielkiego pr zekrętu" [Reprivatizing Poland. History of a Great Scam]. The books are especially useful to reflect on some of the gender issues of eviction. The two d...

Chapter 10 discusses homelessness among migrant women across Europe. To date, there is very little empirical research dedicated to, or inclusive of, the experiences of migrant homeless women. In an effort to open up the debate, the authors critically examine potential areas of intersection in the research literature on homelessness, migration and g...

Since the European Union enlargements, NGOs across the 'old EU' have been reporting increasing numbers of clients from the 'new' Member States. As local authorities and service providers respond to these needs, policies are in a dynamic process of being made, changed and negotiated. This ar ticle presents findings from a recently completed research...

The number of migrants who are presenting to homeless services in European countries has grown recently, in particular following the expansion of the European Union in 2004 and 2007. Migrants often face legal barriers in access to accommodation and welfare assistance, many have limited financial resources and are vulnerable to unemployment, all of...

Municipal and voluntary organisations providing services for the growing numbers of homeless EU migrants are faced with many inconsistencies and contradictions in these migrants' legal situation and their access to services. To see how official policies are realised in everyday practice, sixteen interviews have been conducted in Copenhagen and Dubl...

Migrants from Central and Eastern Europe constitute a growing part of rough-sleeping population in the Western European cities. Cultural aspects of their multiple marginalization can be analyzed with the use of the opposition of communitas and “social structure” introduced by Victor Turner. Using extensive field material gathered during recurrent v...

Among different groups of Poles in Brussels there are an estimated twenty thousand Polish migrants performing undocumented work. The presence of homeless Poles in Brussels indicates the vulnerability of some of the European labour migrants. The article is based on fieldwork conducted amongst Polish people sleeping rough in Brussels in 2008 and 2009...

"Disorderly conduct" and rooflessness in selected European cities. Along with cities' development and changes in urban policies, new ways of controlling public space are emerging. "Broken windows" theory or the concept of the "revanchist city" describe causes of introducing stricter regulations concerning conduct in public spaces. Those regulations...

Publikacja podnosi zagadnienia współczesnych metropolii w wieloaspektowym interdyscyplinarnym kontekście. Autorzy poruszają tematykę zarówno socjologiczną, społeczno-gospodarczą miast, zagadnienia mieszkalnictwa, jak też kompozycji przestrzennej, nowych koncepcji urbanistycznych, czy bezpieczeństwa mieszkańców oraz przestępczości.

The dynamics of migration indicate that the concept of citizenship, and eligibility for particular benefits, is in the process of redefinition in Europe. Migrants may be among the most vulnerable actors on the housing market, and due to their economic position, and their social and language skills, they may be at greater risk of homelessness. In th...

This paper explores the survival strategies, daily-paths and everyday activities of a group of homeless men in Warsaw who live by scavenging. It is based on data collected during three months (April–June 2008) of participant observation focussed on a street corner in the vicinity of two recycling centres/scrap yards, where a group of waste-picking...