Identity Work Among the Homeless: The Verbal Construction and Avowal of Personal Identities

Abstract

This paper elaborates processes of identity construction and avowal among homeless street people, with two underlying and interconected objectives in mind: to advance understanding of the manner in wich individuals at the bottom of status systems attempt to generate identities that provide them with a measures of self-worth and dignity and to shed additional empirical and theoretical light on the relationships among role, identity, and self-concept. The data are from an ethnographic field study of homeless street people. "Identity talk" constitutes the primary form of "identity work" by means of which homeless street people construct and negotiate personal identities. Theree generic patterns of identity talk are alborated and illustrated: distancing, embracement, and fictive storytelling. Each form contains several subtypes that vary in usage according to the length of time one has spent on the streets. The paper concludes by discussing the theoretical implications of the findings and suggesting a number of grounded propositions regarding the relationship among role, identity, and self.