Young and Experiencing Homelessness: Opportunities for Mobilizing Rights

Access to adequate housing is a fundamental right and considered decisive for the social inclusion of persons in homelessness. This article offers a socio-legal analysis of access to rights in the context of the Danish welfare state for young persons in homelessness. Statistics indicate that the number of persons aged 18 to 29 living in homelessness in Denmark almost doubled from 2009 to 2019. Drawing on analyses of law and on interviews with young persons in homelessness, the article examines legal opportunity structures for accessing rights and the young persons’ experiences of mobilizing law. Danish social law outlines opportunities for support in cases of homelessness, and this article’s findings suggest that professionals play a pivotal role for young persons’ access to rights as they can use their expertise and knowledge of both the systemic institutional welfare set-up and a person’s social situation to translate that person’s situation into a social law context, which is decisive for the mobilization of social rights. Without this expertise to draw on, young persons may find themselves lost in a complex welfare state system which has the potential to leave them in an increasingly marginalized situation.