So, what's new? There is certainly nothing new about homelessness. What may be new is the scale of the problem, its visibility, duration and the context in which it is occurring. Part of this changing context is the policy and academic discourse in which references to homelessness are now embedded. Well-worn debates about pathological and structural causes of homelessness have given way to references to social exclusion and social polarisation. The underlying narrative is one of division, fragmentation and of a widening gap between the majority which participates in social and economic life and the minority of the multiply excluded. Just as majorities are, however, differentially included, so minorities are differentially excluded. In other words, there is a continuum of security and insecurity in terms of factors such as employment, income, family life and social networks. This view recognises that homelessness can have both different causes and consequences and that while for some the experience of homelessness may be a temporary episode set within a portfolio of more secure formal and informal resources, for others it is a manifestation of a more general poverty of resources. Equally, for some the foothold on housing and employment, on participation in relatively resource rich social networks of friends and neighbours, may prove to be highly insecure.

The idea that society is now more polarised and that there are widening social fissures does not necessarily imply impermeable boundaries. The implication is that there are well entrenched minorities of privilege and underprivilege at either end of the social spectrum. Between those minorities lies a middle mass in varying degrees of comfort and security. Flexible labour markets, greater job insecurity, the erosion of the Keynesian welfare state and a greater fragility in relationships may, however, mean that it is possible to fall further and faster and that risk and insecurity are now more pervasive. Homelessness in this chapter is used therefore as a general metaphor for severe and typically multifaceted experiences of marginality and exclusion from mainstream society. The experience may be short and sharp or progressively corrosive, longstanding and debilitating.

Before pursuing these and other related issues it is as well to remind ourselves that marginality and subsistence living is the common experience in the everyday life of millions of people when viewed on a global scale.