Completed project

Time and Space of Homeless Persons in a Post-socialist City: A Comparison of Prague and Pilsen

Project duration: 
2015 - 2017

The project focuses on the time and space of homeless persons in relation to conditions of a post-socialistic city. Its goal is to describe characteristics, life and time-space paths and everyday life of homeless people in the context of two Czech cities. The project is unique in many ways. It is the first comparative research on homelessness in the Czech Republic, which is focused on previously neglected topics such as specific time and timing of the activities of the homeless persons. As working with homeless people belonging to various categories of homelessness, it brings a new perspective to the dynamics of living in those types. The combination of research methods used in the project is also unique - as one of a few in Europe it uses empirical GPS devices for studying mobility. In the Czech Republic, it applies the previously unused method of RDS (respondent driven sampling) survey. The surveys and structured interviews are completed with ethnography and photovoice. It put strong emphasis on the active participation of the homeless in the data-collection. Apart from other results, the project provides visually attractive unique data about the situation on the street.

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Topics: 
housing
urban and rural studies
regions
social inequalities
Grant agency: 
Czech Science Foundation (GACR)

Project publications (total 4, displaying 1 - 4)

Vašát, Petr, Petr Gibas, Markéta Poláková

The article uses photovoice to explore the everyday geography of homelessness and its affective dimension. We focus on two aspects of the everyday geography captured by photovoice: (1) movement in space and (2) the performativity of heterotopic places. The aim is to understand how the research partners as actors (re)present and (re)construct their everyday geography by visual means and how they relate to it affectively (or otherwise).

Topic:
housing, gender, methodology, human relations, migration and mobility
Department:
Local and regional studies, Socioeconomics of Housing
Type of publication:
Article with impact factor
Bernard, Josef, Hana Daňková, Petr Vašát

Respondent-driven sampling (RDS) is a survey method for hidden populations and, as such, it offers a suitable approach for sampling the homeless. Surprisingly, the practical use of RDS in surveying homeless populations has only sporadically been described in the professional literature so far, and the specifics of using RDS for sampling this group have not been reflected in depth.

Topic:
urban and rural studies, methodology, social inequalities, sociological data
Department:
Local and regional studies
Type of publication:
Article with impact factor
Šimon, Martin, Vašát, Petr, Poláková, Markéta, Gibas, Petr, Daňková, Hana

The aim of this article is to investigate the factors that influence the size of activity spaces of homeless men and women in cities. Vulnerable population groups such as the homeless face the risk of mobility challenges that can exacerbate their social exclusion even more through mobility-driven spatial exclusion. The extent of an individual’'s activity space is a key precondition for the daily coping strategies and life opportunities of homeless people.

Topic:
urban and rural studies, methodology, migration and mobility, social inequalities, social policy
Department:
Local and regional studies, Socioeconomics of Housing
Type of publication:
Article with impact factor
Vašát, Petr, Petr Gibas
Topic:
housing, urban and rural studies, methodology, migration and mobility, social inequalities
Department:
Local and regional studies
Type of publication:
Chapter in monograph