Methodological reflections in contexts of social vulnerability: Breaking the dynamics of exclusion through research with people experiencing homelessness

This article arises as a product process of the reflections of three researchers who analyze what it means to experience homelessness and how to deal with the multiple methodological decisions that emerge when researching and working with people who find themselves in situations that make them vulnerable and stigmatized. Experiencing homelessness constitutes a synthesis of multiple conditioning factors, even though homeless people may attribute their situations to biographical crises that cannot be overcome due to “personal difficulties.” Their stories are characterized by fragmented professional and educational trajectories, framed by processes of symbolic, material, and affective possession–dispossessions that have culminated in their social exclusion and invisibility. Working with these people is challenging, as we have to ensure that they participate and are not harmed, as well as offer respect and show understanding of the information that is shared with us. We have chosen narrative approaches to better understand homeless people everyday life. Not only for its instrumental dimension related to the coconstructed knowledge but also for their ethical and political position: highlighting voices of voiceless such as those experienced homelessness. To elicit participants’ narratives, we chose walking interviews. This approach allowed us to coconstruct stories that include people experiencing homelessness as actors in the collective process of knowledge construction, while at the same time, as this text shows, we made them visible and reflected on the effects that this approach had on the participants and ourselves.