Exploring Homelessness and Pathways to Social Inclusion: A Comparative Study of Contexts and Challenges in Swiss and Croatian Cities

This qualitative study seeks to break new ground in social research on homelessness by delivering a better understanding of the dimensions and impact of exclusion on people who are homeless in cities of Switzerland and Croatia. In an engaging and participatory way, this project works collaboratively with homeless people and other relevant social actors to advance human understanding and to contribute constructively to local needs and concerns as well as to bring about change in social policies. The main aims of the research are: (1) To generate a new and emic perspective on homelessness and to generate theory that is grounded in the realities of the participants’ daily life experiences based on homeless people’s “voices”. (2) To work out a differentiated landscape of inclusion strategies for professionals in the services for homeless people as well as for local authorities, NGOs, faith-based social services, communities and the state. (3) To bring actors/responsible persons/researchers (young/senior) from Croatia and Switzerland together for cooperation and collaboration as well as to connect them to a wider European network of scientists working on homelessness. To reveal multi-faceted social and cultural contexts, the study is designed as an ethnographic study based on direct observation via fieldwork and grounded in empirical research involving direct contact with relevant people and places in the four cities Zagreb, Split, Basel and Bern. Our project starts exploring homelessness by using ethnographic methods (participant observation, interviewing, walk alongs, reflexivity) paying particular attention to the lived experiences of homelessness. This project is financed within the Croatian-Swiss Research Program of the Croatian Science Foundation and the Swiss National Science Foundation with funds obtained from the Swiss-Croatian Cooperation Program. The principal investigator of the Swiss team is Prof. Dr. Matthias Drilling from the Institute for Social Planning, Organizational Change and Urban Development, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern while the Croatian team’s Principal Investigator is Dr. Lynette Šikić Mićanović from the Institutue of Social Sciences Ivo Pilar. Members of the Croatian project team: Lynette Šikić-Mićanović, Jadranka Rebeka Anić, Paula Greiner, Matija Krizmanić, Suzana Sakić (until April 2022), Stephanie Stelko (until December 2019), Filip Trbojević (from September 2020 to December 2021) and Marica Marinović Golubić (Faculty of Croatian Studies, University of Zagreb)