SOCIAL EXPERIENCES OF HOMELESS WOMEN IN PORTO ALEGRE

Abstract

This text intended to investigate the social meanings that women attribute to their experiences with streetization. It is based on the dialectic-critical method of materialist-historical basis and is based on oral history as a data collection technique. Four women were interviewed, and it was possible to conclude that being in this situation involves particular experiences – sometimes more precarious and sometimes more privileged access to the social assistance network; violence and social meanings produced specifically about this population – and universal experiences that affect the entire homeless population. In addition, that streetization is a contradictory social process and that despite involving a series of losses, inequalities and violence, it is also established through resistance, celebration of life, dreams and the possibility of having hope.