Keywords

Introduction

This chapter is an output from the research project FRAMLAW which is funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark.

Between 2009 and 2019, the number of persons aged 18–29 experiencing homelessness in Denmark almost doubled (Benjaminsen, 2019a), increasing from 1,123 in 2009 to 1,928 in 2019, indicating welfare challenges related to this age group (ibid., 28). In Denmark, persons in homelessness are defined as ‘persons who do not have their own place, and who are referred to temporary housing or who live temporarily and without a tenancy agreement with friends and family’ (ibid., 15). On top of lack of housing, the young persons often experience highly vulnerable situations due to consistent and complex needs for social support (Benjaminsen and Andrade, 2015; Fitzpatrick, 2000). Danish social law offers legal means to address homelessness. It delegates authority to municipal level and allows for welfare professionals’Footnote 1 performance of discretion which add to the welfare system’s complexity and opaqueness. While addressing homelessness is a municipal responsibility, Danish social law stresses that municipalities may draw on both other state actors’ and non-state actors’ resources as means for the municipalities to deliver on social services, whereby social law offers a space for collaboration and interdependence between the actors (Nielsen and Hammerslev, 2022b; Sand, 1996). Decentralisation and actor-interdependence construct potential differences in possible paths to pursue in the process of mobilising welfare rights to exit homelessness. Welfare rights include the right to support to exit homelessness, access social security, (re)enter the labour market or educational programmes, and substance abuse treatment. Despite the diverse character of these welfare rights, they have common aims and organisational characters: Their aim is to mitigate citizens’ social problems through access to support, and thereby further citizens’ social inclusion. Second, the delivery on these welfare rights is organised at municipal level, ascertaining the municipalities’ decisive role as entry points for access to welfare rights. National law’s delegation of authority to municipal level results in potential municipal variation in the supply of social support. For example, in some municipalities, welfare professionals perform outreach work targeting people sleeping rough, and in some municipalities, non-state actors run youth shelters to increase the supply of temporary shelter places to young persons in homelessness. Though national legislation invites for municipal variation, a certain institutional standardisation of paths to mobilise welfare rights is identified: First, since Danish municipalities are the main responsible actors for offering social support, they are key entry points for citizens’ access to this support. Second, the institutional organisation of welfare support entails citizens’ engagement with a myriad of actors and units in the process of mobilising welfare rights, depending on the complexity of the situation. In this chapter, we examine pathways to welfare rights mobilisation among young persons in homelessness as we ask:

Which pathways do young persons experiencing homelessness pursue when mobilising their welfare rights, and what motivates their choice?

Existing research stresses that especially socially marginalised citizens, meaning citizens who are experiencing social problems such as substance abuse, homelessness and long-term unemployment all of which challenge their social inclusion, may experience problems with accessing welfare rights (Baier, 2010; Hammerslev and Nielsen, 2021; McCann, 2008; Nielsen and Hammerslev, 2022a; Zemans 1982). The next section outlines the theoretical framework of legal mobilisation applied in this chapter to analyse the young persons’ processes of mobilising law to address their social situation. Subsequently, a section accounts for the choice of our qualitative methods, then followed by the analysis. Lastly, the chapter is rounded off with a concluding discussion.

The Theoretical Framework: Legal Mobilisation

In a dialectic process between our theoretical readings and analyses of our empirical data, we draw on concepts from legal mobilisation literature. The literature defines, in different ways, legal mobilisation as a process where individuals and collective actors transform their perceived problemsFootnote 2 into legal problems and then mobilise law with the aim of changing their situation (see e.g. Vanhala and Kinghan, 2022; Zemans, 1982). Legal mobilisation literature often applies a bottom-up perspective, examining individuals’ ways to mobilise law when encountering a ‘perceived problem’ (Zemans, 1982), as ‘an articulation of a grievance’ (McCann, 2008) or a ‘perceived injurious experience’ (Felstiner et al., 1981). Legal mobilisation literature has a process-centred approach, examining the process from when a problem is perceived and articulated, then transformed into a legal issue which may then be acted upon by the individual (Felstiner et al., 1981; Zemans, 1982).

Several key elements are decisive for the process of mobilising rights. In this chapter, we draw on existing literature that introduces concepts and approaches to the analysis of legal mobilisation processes. Generally, a problem undergoes a transformation process, where, first, a person must perceive an occurrence as a problem. Perception is subjective and critical for the processes of legal mobilisation as it influences whether a person decides to take action, lump the case or pursue a path of avoidance. To take action indicates that law is actively applied to change the situation; lumping is the decision to, initially at least, tolerate or ignore the situation and thus a conscious choice of not to act within the social space of law, whereas avoidance is a more proactive choice of action with the intention of ‘lessen if not eliminate the felt wrong’ (Zemans, 1982, p. 1005). Elements like the type of incident, the relationship between the parties involved and the seriousness of the situation affect the ‘perception of a new event as normal, problematic, harmful, or wrong’ (Chua and Engel, 2019, p. 337). As Zemans (1982) points to, community norms, persons’ economic, social and educational resources and their rights consciousnessFootnote 3 also play a role in the transformation process as they influence possible schemes of perceptions as well as perceptions of possible practices. Intermediaries may, too, be decisive for the individual’s choice of path to pursue (Olesen and Hammerslev, 2018). As also Bourdieu (1986) stresses, a person’s resources and sense of the social world influence the ability to translate a social situation into the language of the law and, from that, transform it into a legal situation, thereby enabling a process of mobilising rights. Moreover, studies on access to justice (Hammerslev and Nielsen, 2021; Lemann Kristiansen, 2022; Nielsen and Hammerslev, 2018, 2022a) stress that (non-)transparency of rules and welfare bureaucracy influence persons’ ability to mobilise law. The individual’s expectation of success and anticipated costs of welfare claiming, that is, how many resources that may be demanded in the rights claiming process, can further influence whether action, lumping or avoidance take place (Brodkin and Majmundar, 2010; Zemans, 1982). These processes are complex and contingent. If a person decides to take action, this may be done on the person’s own or by seeking advice or assistance with the purpose of taking a case to a legal institution, including government agency. In such cases, persons may refer to the law and to actors with legal insights and expertise with the purpose of strategically positioning themselves in encounters with the welfare system to pursue a specific result (Mnookin and Kornhauser, 1979).

Method

The empirical data in this chapter is collected through semi-structured interviews to invite for a discursive space of letting respondents’ stories take the lead, yet still enabling comparison across the interviews (Hertogh, 2018; Mik-Meyer, 2018). As we are inspired by the anthropological approach to studies of legal mobilisation (McCann, 2008), we emphasise the respondents’ construction of meaning and motivation for behaviour as reflected in their narratives. Thus, it is the young persons’ accounts of experiences and practices related to homelessness rather than their actual practices that constitute the empirical data.

Respondents were selected based on the criteria that they experience or recently had experienced homelessness, they were Danish citizens, and that they were 18 to 29 years old. We delimited our focus to this age group based on two aspects: First, statistics indicate a rather dramatic increase in homelessness in the age group of 18 and 29 compared to the relative increase in the general homeless population in Denmark. Second, Danish social law regulating access to social security outlines specific rules related to this age group. These rules include a lower level of social security compared to persons from the age of 30 and an increased activation focus with the purpose of including the young persons in either the labour market or in educational programmes (Nielsen and Hammerslev, 2022b). Following the legal regulation, this group of persons generally has less money available which makes it increasingly difficult to find affordable housing (Benjaminsen, 2019b, 6, 13).

We delimited our focus to respondents residing in one of two of the 98 Danish municipalities. The two municipalities were selected based on statistics that show a percentage-wise comparable number of young persons in homelessness. However, in this chapter we do not elaborate further on municipal variations and similarities, rather we focus on the young persons’ descriptions of mobilising welfare rights. We conducted 11 semi-structured interviews with young persons. In itself, 11 interviews is not a large number, but taking into consideration our selection criteria and the saturation of the data material, we argue that the quality of the interviews does provide an empirical basis for our examination (Guest et al., 2006).

In the analysis, we elaborate on five of the 11 respondents’ narratives as thick descriptions (Geertz, 1973). The five descriptions are included to illustrate the influence of rights consciousness, social network and sense of the welfare bureaucracy for their agency. Contact with the young persons was established through different gatekeepers. Generally, gatekeepers are central in cases where the target group may be difficult to reach (Cohen and Arieli, 2011; Watters and Biernacki, 1989), as, for example, people in homelessness who often live instable lives. For us, the gatekeepers were decisive as they helped us identify potential respondents, and they drew on their trust-based relations with the young persons as they vouched for us, thereby contributing to overcome potential barriers of distrust. Gatekeepers were, for example, welfare professionals from job centres, contact persons and staff at a warming centre where the manager allowed us full access. During our field work at the warming centre, we established contact with young persons who were willing to share their story of homelessness. Another example is the gatekeeping function of an NGO that helped facilitating contact to their target group of socially marginalised citizens, including persons in homelessness. Several of the interviews took place ad hoc, for example at the warming centre, and were often interrupted by respondents’ lack of concentration and/or the buzzing life of the surroundings.

Five of the 11 interviews were recorded and verbatim transcribed. Six interviews are reconstructed based on field notes as respondents, despite consenting to the interview, asked for the interview not to be recorded. From this it follows that for six of the interviews, the data material consists of notes from the conversation which were jotted down as soon as possible after the interview. This implies that there may be information which is unintentionally yielded or imprecise as a result of a lack of details in the researchers’ recollection of the conversations (Spradley, 1979). We sought to systematise data, whether recorded or not, by leaning on an interview guide with the purpose of ensuring rigour in the data despite the different characteristics of data. All data is pseudonymised by assigning the young persons other names and noising their identity by slightly adjusting age which does not affect the data material’s contribution in its entirety as these changes do not conflict with the stories shared by the respondents (Kvale, 1994). The data was coded in NVivo, and in the process of writing this paper, we coded data based on two main categories, namely ‘institutional paths’ and ‘individual factors’. These main categories were established based on existing legal mobilisation and pathways to justice literature (Genn, 1999; Hammerslev and Nielsen, 2021; McCann, 2008; Nielsen and Hammerslev, 2018; Pleasence et al., 2003; Zemans, 1982). The main categories were then further specified, drawing on the interview data. Institutional paths were divided into, for example, state versus non-state actors whom the young persons would interact with to mobilise welfare rights. Individual factors were further specified into, for example, ‘rights consciousness’ and ‘personal resources’ as the data stressed that these factors were decisive for the young persons’ choice of legal mobilisation paths. These categories supported a systematic analysis of the young persons’ mobilisation of welfare rights to address their homelessness situation.

Analysis: Choice of Paths—Complex and Contingent Processes

Generally, the young persons’ stories reflect experiences of conflict and disillusion in their attempts to mobilise welfare rights. These experiences are often caused by lack of resources to meet welfare bureaucratic requirements, for example related to keeping appointments with numerous welfare professionals and navigating on digital platforms (Nielsen and Hammerslev, 2022a).Footnote 4 Though the young persons share experiences of homelessness, they express different experiences and understandings which inform their perceptions and practices in the processes of mobilising welfare rights. In this section, we analytically draw a distinction between active and passive agency, inspired by the empirical data introduced below. Active agency refers to the respondents’ own practice performance to pursue paths to welfare rights. Passive agency refers to either respondents’ non-practices or to practices taken by others but the respondents to improve the social situation. Some narratives reflect a great extent of active agency in positioning oneself in encounters with welfare professionals whereas others appear rather passive in this process or actively decide to lump their case. It is pivotal to stress that the agency identified in the narratives is not static. Rather, it potentially fluctuates as processes of legal mobilisation are dynamic, contingent and subjective, and individuals’ experiences of such processes and other elements in life inform future practices.

We unfold the relative difference between active and passive agency through the analysis of five respondents’ descriptions. Below, we draw on quotes from interviews with the young persons to illustrate the complex and contingent character of legal mobilisation processes. The five respondents are Philip who is in his early 30s and experienced homelessness in his 20s, Simon and Michael who are both in their mid-20s, and Jacob and Anne who are in their early 20s. At the time of the interview, Philip and Michael had recently exited homelessness whereas Simon was still homeless. Jacob was admitted to a youth shelter which offers temporary residence. Anne, on the contrary, did not categorise her situation as one of homelessness. Rather, she argued that she was not in a situation of homelessness as she could stay with friends or family on day-to-day basis. However, we include Anne’s story as her situation can be defined as one of homelessness in accordance with the official Danish definition.

The analysis is structured as follows: We start with Philip’s account which we interpret as reflecting active agency, and we end with Anne’s story which we interpret as reflecting more of a passive agency, placing the stories of Michael, Simon and Jacob between the two. In the following, we elaborate on the analyses to illustrate the contingency characterising legal mobilisation processes. Despite the respondents’ different narratives, we identify overlapping aspects, namely the relevance of the respondents’ social network, their rights consciousness and their sense of position as rights holder in a welfare state context.

Philip’s Story

‘It’s my mantra: “It’s difficult to break the rules if you don’t know them”’, Philip states. Taking a starting point in this perspective on law, knowledge of law is, to him, a means of power to strategise one’s practices. Drawing on Philip’s story, decisive factors for his path to mobilise welfare rights are individual resources as rights consciousness and social resources as friends and relations to the Danish NGO, SAND [The Danish Homeless Organisation], which is specialised in offering support to persons in homelessness. Before turning 18, he was placed in a welfare institution, but the placement terminated when he turned 18 as he, in accordance with Danish welfare law, was then to be considered an adult and thus not eligible for placement at the institution. For some time, he travelled around the country, ‘couch surfing or illegally subletting at friends’ places’. However, this came to an end as a landlord found out that he was illegally subletting and evicted him and two of his then roommates. This situation made him apply for admission at a municipal youth shelter to which he was then admitted together with one of the former roommates, yet ‘here I was just put on hold’. Based on previous experiences with welfare institutions, he was aware of options for temporary stays at youth shelters which motivated him to reach out to these state actors. However, though he was granted support as he was admitted to the shelter, Philip’s expectations of success with improving his situation appears to be failed due to the lack of progress experienced during his stay at the shelter. Later during his stay, his former roommate was allocated an apartment under the auspices of the youth shelter, and Philip moved in with him while waiting for an apartment of his own. He explained to us that:

When you are admitted to a shelter it is a legal requirement that you are signed up for social housing. I did that, but it was difficult because the woman I talked to about that did not seem to know that you have the right to take exception to their suggestions of housing, for example based on the level of rent or the locality of the apartment.

Philip’s rights consciousness reflects an awareness of how to access social support in the welfare system; yet in the actual encounter with the welfare bureaucracy, he experiences a mismatch between his knowledge of rights and the welfare professional’s practices. Based on his rights consciousness, he takes exceptions to some of the housing suggestions: ‘I didn’t feel secure about the neighbourhood they suggested. Too many drugs, I wouldn’t last long there, then I would be back on the streets again’. Motivated by his desire for stabilising his housing situation, he thus attempts to mobilise his rights. Later, after being allocated suitable housing based on these exceptions, Philip applied for aftercareFootnote 5 which

was basically “let’s rent a movie and eat pizza”. Nothing about how to clean your apartment or draw up a budget. I never learned these things … and they wouldn’t offer more: “That’s not our department, we don’t have any of your papers because your case was under the Children and Young Persons Unit so we can’t offer you support”.

Again, based on his perception of his situation and need for support to stabilise it, Philip reaches out to whom he identifies as relevant actors, but the organisation of the welfare bureaucracy into separate and somewhat isolated units appears to be a hindrance. Philip’s pursuing of welfare rights is informed by his sense of the welfare system, as he reflects on his ability to engage with the welfare bureaucracy: ‘it’s only because I am as resourceful as I am, due to my experiences’. Though his experiences and individual resources do further his ability to independently pursue a path to welfare rights, he does at times fall short in the actual encounters with welfare bureaucracy. In these cases, he draws on the expertise of SAND which as an intermediary ‘has helped me to cope with it all, and sometimes I ask them to represent me: “You have the absolute authority to speak on my behalf”. And then they do that’.

Analysing Philip’s story, we interpret it as one of a greater level of active agency, informed by rights consciousness and a resourceful social network: He knows how to speak the language of law, and when he himself fails to mobilise his rights, he draws on social relations with expertise, such as non-state actors who, on his behalf, apply law in the representation of his interests.

Michael’s Story

Michael’s story reflects lesser active agency compared to that of Philip’s, and it reflects the potentially decisive role that welfare professionals play in supporting citizens’ mobilisation of welfare rights. ‘My contact person at my school reached out to the youth shelter’, Michael explains as he accounts for the initiating process of addressing his homelessness situation: ‘I knew that there were some criteria you need to meet but I wasn’t sure if I would match them’. Drawing on his sense of the welfare state, he considers it a potential entry point for support, yet his perception and categorisation of his own situation hinder further mobilisation of welfare rights. In this case, the contact person, as an intermediary, transforms Michael’s situation into that of a social situation which can be addressed legally in the welfare system. Action was then taken to admit Michael to a youth shelter where he was allocated a contact person: ‘It was a rough place with drugs, alcohol, violence. But it was only temporarily, and that made it bearable’. Once every month the so-called Urgent Housing Office of the municipality would drop by the shelter and inform about housing possibilities and facilitate matches between the young persons and available housing, Michael told us. Based on these introductions, there was a housing match between the municipal supply and Michael’s needs, and he then got an apartment in which he at the time of the interview still lives. In the process of exiting the shelter and settling in at the apartment, his shelter contact person introduced him to a new contact person who would support him in this process and be available for advice and guidance. This reflects a so-called chain responsibility across municipal units where focus is on stabilising relations between young persons and contact persons: ‘My contact person at the shelter reached out to the new contact person. They know each other. And then the three of us met up, and now the new one is my contact person’. In Michael’s situation, the contact persons seem to constitute a base of trust and self-confidence, especially in encounters with other welfare authorities, such as job centre caseworkers:

When you are dealing with the municipality, it’s about sanctions, this immediate danger, and threats. Of course it’s also about support but it’s mostly about threats. Whereas, with the contact persons, they are there to help.

His distinction between ‘the municipality’ and ‘the contact persons’ is, institutionally, interesting as the contact persons are, too, municipal actors. Yet, from Michael’s perspective, they perform a different role, and based on this role performance he categorises them as central for his ability to navigate in the welfare bureaucracy: ‘Sometimes my contact person accompanies me to the meetings at the job centre. Not that she has to say much, just to have someone there who knows you. It helps’. Bringing the contact person to these encounters can be interpreted as Michael’s strategy to position himself in the somewhat standardised welfare encounters where the trust-based relations to the contact person furthers his sense of agency in dealing with other welfare professionals with whom he does not have these trust-based relations. Now, Michael’s social situation appears to be stabilised. He is allocated affordable housing and enrolled in an educational programme. His contact person is still present in his life, stressing the relevance of these social relations. As he explains: ‘I do not know much about the rules and my rights. But I know that I know someone who does’. In Michael’s case, his agency is less active compared to Philip’s as it is initiated and facilitated primarily by others but himself. This also stresses the contingent character of legal mobilisation as social network and other contacts can be random, determined by time, space and relations.

Simon’s Story

As with Michael, we interpret Simon’s story as one of less active agency. At first, Simon’s narrative reflects a high level of autonomy, but then, due to failed success in his pursuing of welfare rights, he resigns and lumps his legal mobilisation process. Simon’s background is unique, compared to the other respondents: He has an education, and he used to own a company. His de-route began as his use of substances got out of hand: Unable to deliver on client contracts, his company went bankrupt, and he was evicted from his apartment as he could not pay rent:

First I thought I could deal with it [addressing substance abuse and homelessness] myself. Save up some money for an apartment deposit. But then, I thought, that if I was to be enrolled in the substance abuse centre, then why not go all in and deal with the municipality, too? But I’ve been homeless now for two years, and they just keep telling me “we can’t help you”.

Simon’s rights consciousness and sense of the welfare system at first sparked practices to reach out to municipal actors as entry points for mobilising social rights. Yet, after having experienced rejections from the municipality, he appears hesitant in mobilising law through these channels. The rejection is, according to Simon, motivated by the municipality’s different perceptions of his situation: ‘They keep telling me “You are a special case” because of my background. But I am homeless, I have no money, no home, I have to borrow money from everyone I know’. From Simon’s perspective, the welfare system’s standardised categorisation of who can be considered as living in homelessness sustains his vulnerable situation. He tried several times to reach out to the municipality for financial support and housing assistance:

They want me to document my income. But I haven’t had any regulated income for two years, only black money. And I can’t document that. “Then we can’t help you”, they say.

Again, Simon experiences rejections from the welfare bureaucracy, this time sparked by divergent perceptions between Simon and the welfare bureaucracy related to the relevance and importance of documentation for access to support. As Simon’s lived life, namely that of earning black money, clashes with the standardised procedures of the welfare bureaucracy, it results in an ongoing failure to meet welfare systemic expectations which leads him to lump the case. He explains that he, as a result of the company bankruptcy has ‘read a lot on rules and regulation, and I am pretty good at that. But this municipal regulation, I don’t know much about. It is tricky’. Thus, in some contexts, he is resourceful in acquiring and applying legal knowledge, yet, to him, lack of transparency in welfare regulation is considered a challenge for the ability to mobilise welfare law. Compared to Michael’s narratives, there is an absence of intermediaries in Simon’s story. He attempts to draw on his own resources, sparked by his initiate categorisation and perception of himself as independent and autonomous, yet as he fails to further his case, he lumps it, whereby he settles into resignation and passivity, and the case goes no further.

Jacob’s Story

We interpret Jacob’s story as one of reflecting somewhat passive agency. Jacob has recently been admitted to a municipal youth shelter because of instable family relations: ‘I lived with my father, but he was sent to prison. Then I phoned around [to shelters], and I ended here [at the municipal youth shelter]’, he explains. In this account, Jacob takes active measures to address his housing situation, based on a rights consciousness and sense of the welfare system that shelters may be entry points for support to temporarily stabilise the situation of lack of housing. Though performing practices to address the situation, we categorise Jacob’s narrative as one of passivity as his categorisation of himself and his (lack of) resources appear to hinder active participation in the further process of exiting homelessness:

When you are homeless, you don’t have any energy because everything is just a mess. The economy is a mess, bills keep coming but you try to hide from it all and make some fast money instead. Then you’re free from those municipal meetings. You are bogged down by those, at least I was. But then again, I don’t have much energy.

Jacob’s rights consciousness is reflected in his awareness of possibilities for municipal support, but lack of resources to accommodate to the standardised requirements of the welfare bureaucracy resulted in avoidance behaviour. Yet, his stay at the shelter may mark a change: The shelter staff offers to accompany residents to appointments, for example with the job centre, substance abuse counsellors or physicians. Moreover, a representative from the municipal job centre stops by at the shelter once per week to help with drafting of CVs and job applications. In these practices, shelter staff and the job centre representative may perform the role of intermediaries in attempting to facilitate relations between shelter residents and relevant welfare professionals. In doing so, they may mitigate residents’ experiences of welfare claiming costs which Jacob, too, expresses: ‘I can’t apply for jobs because I don’t have an email account, and I don’t have a CV. I know there is someone dropping by from the job centre, and I want to talk to her about it’. In addition to not having the energy to engage in welfare encounters, Jacob does not have digital resources to meet standardised procedures of digital communication with welfare actors, nor to position himself competitively in job hunt processes. As he explains, ‘I don’t have a digital ID so I can’t check my digital mailbox. I have no overview of what’s going on. None, whatsoever’. His failure to meet the standardised expectations of digital competences appears to some extent to settle him into resignation, yet his recently acquired awareness that support can be offered at the shelter spurs reflections on potential practices to improve his situation:

It would help, I think, to have some from the staff with me to the appointments [with the municipality] … The meetings can be long, and I don’t understand half of it. It doesn’t matter to me, and then I forget everything. It would be nice to have someone to accompany me, otherwise it’s just me and five from the municipality or something like that.

As with Michael’s relations to his contact persons, having someone accompany you may construct a sense of improved abilities to perform practices in the welfare bureaucratic encounters. These experiences, as expressed by both Jacob and Michael, stress the relevance of potential intermediaries in the young persons’ social network for their processes of mobilising welfare rights.

Anne’s Story

As with Jacob’s story, we interpret Anne’s story as one of reflecting passivity. Though Anne explicitly does not categorise her situation as one of homelessness, we include her story to illustrate the relevance of categorisation and perception for the initiating phase of mobilising rights. As she describes: ‘I am not really homeless. I have my address at family members’, and then I spent the nights at my partner’s place. Or at friends’ places’. Thus, she has social resources to stabilise her housing situation on a day-to-day basis, and, from her perspective, there is no basis for action. It can be argued that her social network of friends, family and her partner remedy her lack of housing, but at the same time sustains the situation. Through these connections she finds shelter every night, however it is inherently instable and temporary and not a base for a more stable housing situation. It appears that there is an absence of intermediaries with expert insights who potentially would be able to transform Anne’s situation into a welfare legal context whereby a process of legal mobilisation could be initiated. The absence of intermediaries was also the case for Simon who, too, did not receive welfare support to address his housing situation. Yet, the difference between Anne and Simon is that Simon did try to reach out to relevant welfare professionals whereas Anne did not. Instead, she argues that she is not ‘really homeless’ (our italicisation). Going into depth with this short self-description, it could be argued that Anne does have a rights consciousness related to her precarious housing situation, however she distances herself from stereotypical ideas of persons in homelessness by drawing a distinction between the ‘really homeless’ and herself. In addition, she relativises her situation in relation to both the welfare bureaucratic system and citizens who are in more dire housing situations: ‘I have a place to stay, though I don’t always know where and for how long. So, I don’t want to be a bother in the welfare system. Others need it more than I do’. Following this reflection, Anne expresses a rights consciousness related to opportunities for support but decides to avoid interactions with the welfare system as she perceives her situation as less problematic compared to others. In her case, the absence of intermediaries and her self-categorisation based on relativism result in passivity whereby a path to legal mobilisation is not pursued.

To sum up, the young persons’ rights consciousness, their social network and their sense of themselves as rights holders in a welfare bureaucratic context are, in different ways, central factors for their paths to mobilise welfare rights. Despite these overlapping factors, the unfolding of the respondents’ stories illustrates the complex and contingent character of legal mobilisation processes. Moreover, the stories stress the often-experienced mismatch between the standardised welfare bureaucracy which rely on fixed criteria and documentation and the often chaotic lived lives of the young persons, making it difficult for the young persons to navigate on standardised welfare systemic terms.

Concluding Discussion

Applying a bottom-up perspective to the analyses of transforming welfare rights into practice, this chapter includes some of society’s most marginalised citizens’ perspectives to examine their experiences of mobilising law, namely those of young persons in homelessness in the Danish welfare state.

Despite the contingent and complex character of the respondents’ mobilisation processes, we identified overlapping elements of significance in their narratives: Rights consciousness, social network and ‘sense’ of the welfare state influence the respondents’ level of agency. Based on this, we draw up an analytical distinction between active agency and passive agency to illustrate the elements’ dynamic relevance.

Respondents who reflect a greater rights consciousness, sense of the welfare state and of themselves as holders of rights are interpreted as reflecting ‘active agency’ which spark practices of pursuing welfare rights. When experiencing high costs of welfare claiming, the respondents are able to draw on intermediaries, including non-state actors, in their social network whereby non-state actors potentially play a decisive role for the young homeless’ opportunities in encounters with the welfare bureaucracy.

Respondents whose narratives reflect general rights consciousness and sense of the welfare state, but who do not actively pursue paths to welfare rights are considered as reflecting a more ‘passive agency’. The passivity is reflected in the lack of actively claiming rights. The passivity is often caused by either lack of reserves of energy to ‘pay’ the welfare claiming costs of navigating in the welfare bureaucracy, mismatch in perception and categorisation of the situation, or the absence of intermediaries to facilitate a process of mobilising welfare rights.

In between the two distinctions of active and passive agency, respondents’ accounts reflect a certain level of rights consciousness and sense of being holders of rights in a welfare state context. Yet, opaqueness in welfare state regulation and the character of the welfare bureaucracy may hinder processes of mobilising welfare law. In Michael’s case, this process is to a large extent facilitated by contact persons who, as welfare professionals, transform Michael’s individual situation into a welfare context. In Simon’s case, the absence of intermediaries appears to be a hindrance for his ability to overcome experienced obstacles on the path of pursuing welfare rights. Comparing the five respondents’ descriptions, we interpret the two first narratives, Philip’s and Michael’s, as reflecting active agency, though to different extents. The common factor between the two respondents is the fact that they have recently succeeded in exiting homelessness. This means that time has passed since they experienced the acute and urgent situation of homelessness, and time’s passing may have influenced their present perception of their past experiences, allowing for greater resources to reflect upon their processes and experiences.

These analyses of the young persons’ narratives offer insights into their experiences and perceptions of encountering a complex welfare state bureaucracy which they to a large extent depend on for mobilising welfare rights. Clashes between an often-standardised welfare bureaucracy and the general chaotic and instable lives of the young persons in homelessness may result in lumping or avoidance if the individual person does not have sufficient resources, either individually or by drawing on intermediaries. Easy and continuous access to a strong social network thus appears to be a decisive factor for initiating and maintaining paths of mobilising welfare rights to exit homelessness. Without this network, the young persons may be lost in the complex welfare state system, leaving them in increasingly marginalised situations.