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AB - Abstract Research has shown that most homeless people suffer from weak support from family, relatives and friends. Based on a descriptive statistical analysis with biographical records of 810 subjects, and a thematic analysis of interviews with homeless people (N = 65), people at risk of homelessness (N = 5) and professionals (N = 20), the article explores the social support system of homeless people from Chisinau (Moldova). Only 18.6 per cent of all users of the Shelter for homeless in Chisinau were in a couple relationship (and only 5.6 per cent registered officially). For former detainees (23 per cent of the Shelter users) and care leavers (11 per cent), it is even more difficult to find a couple and to strengthen their social support network, as the institutions they come from did not foster their social support. As homelessness becomes chronic, people build social support networks with other homeless people. This social support helps homeless people to cope with stressful living conditions. The article suggests, in the case of Moldova, that social support relations with family, friends, acquaintances and other homeless people are affected negatively in the absence of policies and institutional measures targeted to encourage and strengthen such relationships. Social support, social capital, social bonds, homelessness, shelters, Moldova Introduction The World Health Organisation and extensive specialised literature have shown the importance of ‘social support’ (by family, friends and social relationships) for subjective well-being, material comfort and the mental balance of each person, all the more so for the people deprived of any resources. Interviews with homeless people in Chisinau (the capital of the Republic of Moldova) bring out numerous stories of broken friendships, divided kinship and families shattered by grief and hard feelings. The analysis of 810 biographic records of users of the Shelter for homeless in Chisinau corroborates this finding. These people are vulnerable not only because they are excluded from the mainstream society but also because most of them have lost support from family and former friends’ surroundings. In the context of reduced public and community services addressed to homeless people in Moldova and other post-socialist societies (Stephenson, 2006; Höjdestrand, 2009; O’Neill, 2017), informal support from family, friends and acquaintances become all the more important. The article examines the relationships that homeless people—shelter users and people living on the streets—maintain with family members, friends and other homeless people. It will also seek to understand why the Shelter and other social services fail to create and strengthen relationships of social support amongst users. A rich bibliography proves deterioration of social support networks, in particular of family ties, amongst homeless people in most of the world’s cities where this phenomenon has been studied (Letiecq et al., 1996; Lee et al., 2000; Eyrich et al., 2003; Brousse, 2006; Stephenson, 2006; Paugam, 2008; Zugazaga, 2008; Carton et al., 2010; Höjdestrand, 2009; Shier et al., 2011; Dietrich-Ragon, 2014; Firdion and Marsat, 2014; Dietrich-Ragon, 2015). A robust social support system can prevent a person’s housing vulnerability (Slesnick et al., 2008; Colombo, 2015; Dietrich-Ragon, 2015). Conversely, lack of support from close relatives and friends in a crisis can lead to homelessness and further deprivation (Paugam, 2008; Zugazaga, 2008; Shinn, 2010). Besides, strong institutional support (by social workers and other professionals) can help to exit homelessness (Zugazaga, 2008; Carton et al., 2010; Jones et al., 2012; Colombo, 2015; Dietrich-Ragon, 2015). This article shares the perspective that social support networks (consisting of close and distant relationships) play a crucial role in connecting homeless people to opportunities and resources in their environment (Molina, 2000; Carton et al., 2010; Radey, 2018). Informal support networks become crucial for the survival and well-being of these people in the post-socialist context of Moldova, where the state withdrew a part of its previous prerogatives regarding social protection whereas the non-governmental services that addressed to these categories of people remain weak. From the perspective of replacement theory, the previous social support system is replaced by weaker and less reliable support received from other homeless people (La Gory et al., 1991; Eyrich et al., 2003; Carton et al., 2010). The article also examines the role of ‘week’ and ‘disposable’ ties for homeless people’s support and survival (Granovetter, 1973; Desmond, 2012), or of the ‘comrades’, as opposed to ‘friends’ by interviewees. The Republic of Moldova, an East European country with a population of 3.5 million, including migrants (National Bureau of Statistics, 2018), is located between Ukraine and Romania and is divided between Russia and the European Union from a cultural and geopolitical perspective. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and its independence (in 1991), Moldova has faced systemic economic difficulties, endemic poverty and low quality of governance (Negura, 2016). The Moldovan case is compelling to approach regarding the evolution of social support networks of urban poor, especially homeless people, within a context of a weakening and underfinanced social welfare system, a situation that is specific to the countries of the ex-USSR and Eastern Europe (Lux and Sunega, 2014; Tsenkova and Polanska, 2014). The fall of a massive part of the population below the limit of absolute poverty has generated the emergence of economic survival strategies and practices, including migration (Cheianu-Andrei, 2016; Negură, 2016). The families are often a place of protection and support in times of economic hardship, compensating for the insufficiency of social services (Burawoy and Verdery, 1999; Caldwell, 2004; Polese et al., 2014). However, many families underwent disruptive experiences during that period such as unemployment, multiple deprivations, migration (affecting up to one-third of active population at the end of the 2000s), and political and economic instability. In the 1990s and 2000s, the number of marriages (per 1,000 inhabitants) decreased from 9.4 in 1990 to 7.6 in 2006, while the number of divorces increased from three in 1990 to four in 2006 per 1,000 inhabitants. Many intergenerational links have been affected by this transformation (IDIS Viitorul, 2008). For many vulnerable people, family networks ceased to be the primary way of support. Therefore, an important burden of social protection has fallen on the shoulders of the state. However, against the background of economic crisis, the state has greatly diminished its social protection capacity. The social welfare system in the post-socialist states, including Moldova, was affected in the post-1990 years by under-financing and lower institutional capacity (Burlacu, 2007; Cerami, 2009; Polese et al., 2014). The public system of social apartments and workers’ dormitories was almost entirely privatised during the 1990s (Negură, 2016). Today, the social housing system in Moldova is very far from being able to satisfy the demands of this service. Despite a reform starting in 2012 of de-institutionalisation through the opening of community mental health centres, psychiatric institutions continue to treat a large number of patients (Malcoci and Munteanu, 2017; Borzin, 2018). Some patients, lacking family support, end up on streets. However, unlike the situations in the USA and the UK (Lamb and Weinberger, 2005), the incidence of people with psychiatric diagnosis amongst homeless people in Moldova is insignificant because of still widespread institutionalisation of psychiatric patients. To deal with an increasing number of socially vulnerable people becoming homeless in the late 1990s and the early 2000s, the Chisinau municipality opened in 2004 the first service to homeless persons, the Centre for Hosting and Orientation for Homeless People (the Shelter). This shelter provides night-time accommodation (from 20:00 to 8:00), social assistance, basic medical care and food (breakfast and dinner) for up to 100 users. Many users stay in the Shelter for more than three months as stipulated in the internal regulation. Also, most users return to the Shelter after several months. This explains the relatively small number of unique users from 2004 to early 2017 (810 people). In the following years, city authorities opened shelters in two other cities. In 2006, an international Catholic Association opened a shelter for 20 users in Chisinau (with a total of 600 users until April 2019). This shelter was, however, closed down in December 2018 after interruption in funding by international donors and refusal of central and local governments to take over this project. Some non-governmental organisations provide homeless people with soup kitchens, showers, laundry and setup measures to prevent tuberculosis (TB) in homeless people in Chisinau. However, these services are insufficient, given the high number of homeless people, estimated at 3,000–4,000 only in Chisinau city. As in other countries, in Moldova, the state has adopted a binary approach comprising assistance and control for homeless people (Stephenson, 2006; O’Neill 2017; Watts et al., 2018). The government and local authorities provide a number of social services (accommodation, food, social and medical assistance). Yet, the police continue to carry out repressive actions against homeless people in the city. The Chisinau shelter also embodies this binary approach, applying both assistance and disciplinary coercion towards its users. The rigid institutional framework and the discipline supervised by the Shelter administration may prevent or even disrupt interpersonal relations of support. Apart from canteen and break room, there are no common spaces in the Shelter for socializing. The structure of the building itself does not predispose users to communicate and hang out. Even so, the Shelter users are regularly engaged in relationships of mutual support, solidarity and sociability, expressed through strategies of ‘secondary adjustment’, in spite of or beyond the institutional order (Goffman, 1961; Polese et al., 2018; Negură, 2019). In this context of weak and austere social services for homeless, it would be expected that informal support relations would compensate this deficiency. Yet, as this article suggests in the case of Moldova, social support relations not only among homeless people but also between them and their family, friends and acquaintances are disrupted in the absence of policies and institutional strategies targeted to foster and strengthen social bonds. Note on methodology This analysis relies on socio-biographical records of all 810 unique users of the Centre for Homeless People in Chisinau (the Shelter) from its creation in 2004 to February 2017. The records contain general information about the users’ birthdate, birthplace, gender, marital status, education, professional status, work experience, last residence(s), health, relations with family and relatives, short- and long-term objectives, work plans and other related categories. These biographic data have been anonymised and submitted to a descriptive analysis using SPSS software. The author also conducted in-depth interviews from September 2013 to February 2017 with over ninety people (of which sixty-five were homeless people, five were at a risk of homelessness and twenty professionals). From the homeless interviewees, forty-nine were men and sixteen were women. Thirty-eight respondents were interviewed in the Shelter and twenty-seven on streets or in squatted buildings. A sustained observation also accompanied the interviews. The author presented himself to the respondents as a university teacher and independent researcher without any institutional link with the staff of the Shelter. The researcher assured the respondents to respect the confidentiality of information provided in the interviews. All respondents’ names mentioned in this article are pseudonyms. Participants gave written consent to participate in the research. This study complies with internationally accepted ethical guidelines in sociological and social work research. Thematic analysis according to the ‘grounded theory’ model (observing the distribution of thematic categories in the corpus) has been applied to narrative sources with the aid of NVivo software (Corbin and Strauss, 1990; Bazeley and Jackson, 2013). The concepts of social support, social capital and social bonds: uses and definitions Researchers have identified several types of social support for people in crisis situations and acute deprivation: ‘instrumental aid’ (with goods and services), ‘socio-emotional aid’ (empathy, affection and trust) and ‘informational aid’ (useful information) (House, 1981; Antonucci, 1985; Sarason and Sarason, 1985; 2009; Thoits, 1985; Wilcox and Vernberg, 1985; Cohen et al., 2000; Vangelisti, 2009). These three components of social support are considered crucial for the coping strategies of people in difficult situations. In this article, ‘social support’ means mutual relationships of aid and not just a problem-oriented process. The three components of social support coexist in various degrees. It is a composite process that creates lasting relationships of sociability, cohesion and community (Caldwell, 2004; Dean, 2013; Schlecker, 2013). People build and accumulate support relationships throughout their lives. For this reason, consistent support in a difficult situation is most expected from family members (Antonucci, 1985). Perceived deprivation is even higher in cases, where the person has weak family ties or, worse, lost touch with any family surroundings. In the case of East European societies in general, there is a higher expectation of reciprocity attributed to support amongst friends (Burawoy and Verdery, 1999; Pesmen, 2000; Caldwell, 2004). Poverty is often defined in East European societies, besides the primary meaning in terms of material and multidimensional deprivation (exclusion from basic resources), as a failure or disruption of the social support network (Pesmen 2000; Caldwell, 2004; Höjdestrand, 2009). Also, the most advanced deprivation manifests as a ‘cumulative rupture of social bonds’ (Paugam, 2008). The decrease in social security and status of a person occurs, according to Paugam, through the cumulative rupture of the fundamental social bonds, namely: the ‘filiation bond’ (the possibility of counting on parents or children in a difficult situation), the ‘elective participation bond’ (relations with friends and other close persons), the ‘bond of organic participation’ (a sustainable relation with labour market) and the ‘citizenship bond’ (legal status and identity papers). The cumulative rupture of social bonds leads to a process of exclusion on several levels. The term ‘social capital’ as elaborated by Bourdieu (1980) is also useful to understand the multidimensional deprivation of homeless and other vulnerable people. According to the definition given by Bourdieu, ‘Social capital is the aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalised relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition – or in other words, to membership in a group (…)’ (Bourdieu, 1980, pp. 2–3). The size and value of the social capital owned by a person are consubstantially linked to the economic and cultural capitals possessed by that person and the persons with whom he or she is in a sustainable relationship. As economic and cultural capitals are inherited through a composite and durable social process of transmission and internalisation, social capital becomes a significant indicator of belonging to a group, and accordingly of social inequality. Bourdieu’s (1980) concept allows in understanding the economic and cultural values and the limited applicability of social capital held by a homeless person to overcome his or her marginality. Ultimately, the three concepts—‘social support’, ‘social capital’ and ‘social bonds’—are complementary. These terms are used here to understand the same reality of mutual help amongst people, from different social perspectives. Broken families, fragile filiations Quantitative data of 810 Shelter users in Chisinau show that a vast majority of homeless people using the services of this institution did not have the status of a family person (Table 1). About 31 per cent of all users were unmarried, 39 per cent were divorced/separated, 10 per cent were widowed, 5.6 per cent were officially married and 13 per cent were in an ‘open marriage’ relationship (an unregistered couple). The rate of divorces and unmarried persons far exceeds the numbers of these civil status categories of the general population. At the 2004 census, when the Shelter was opened, married people accounted for 58.5 per cent of the total population aged fifteen and over; single persons accounted for 25.9 per cent, widow(er)s 10.1 per cent and divorced as 5.4 per cent (National Bureau of Statistics, 2006). The year of first admission (between 2004 and 2017) is not associated with statistically significant differences in the users’ marital status, although it is statistically associated with education level and last job—their situation worsened by these parameters for the years 2015–2017 while the number of unique users increased significantly. Table 1 Shelter users’ marital status Frequency Per cent Valid Unmarried 248 30.6 Married 45 5.6 Divorced 292 36.0 Widow/er 84 10.4 Separated 27 3.3 Cohabitation 105 13.0 Total 801 98.9 Missing System 9 1.1 Total 810 100.0 Frequency Per cent Valid Unmarried 248 30.6 Married 45 5.6 Divorced 292 36.0 Widow/er 84 10.4 Separated 27 3.3 Cohabitation 105 13.0 Total 801 98.9 Missing System 9 1.1 Total 810 100.0 View Large Table 1 Shelter users’ marital status Frequency Per cent Valid Unmarried 248 30.6 Married 45 5.6 Divorced 292 36.0 Widow/er 84 10.4 Separated 27 3.3 Cohabitation 105 13.0 Total 801 98.9 Missing System 9 1.1 Total 810 100.0 Frequency Per cent Valid Unmarried 248 30.6 Married 45 5.6 Divorced 292 36.0 Widow/er 84 10.4 Separated 27 3.3 Cohabitation 105 13.0 Total 801 98.9 Missing System 9 1.1 Total 810 100.0 View Large Data concerning the users’ marital status from the sample of 810 cases areconsistent with those of the interviewees (sixty-five homeless people and five at risk). Most interviewees were not in a couple at the time of the interview: thirty-eight were divorced, twenty-one were single, 1 was widowed, 6 were married and 4 were in an open marriage relationship. Some of the divorced interviewees experienced divorce a few years before losing their home. For others, the divorce is directly related to the loss of residence, as it also implied the division of dwelling. Several interviewees come from the families living in Chisinau city pauperised in the 1990s. This is the case for most interviewees aged over fifty years (twenty-two people out of seventy). From 810 biographical records of the Shelter users, 33 per cent were 56 years old and more. This age segment was one of the most exposed one to poverty and the most dependent one on social services and benefits (Ministry of Economy of the Republic of Moldova, 2015). Other fourteen interviewees remember nostalgically the childhood they spent during the Soviet period in ‘ordinary’ families with parents working in enterprises. Several studies have highlighted the link between the loss of family members or lack of support from close persons and the vulnerability of people at risk (Lee et al., 2000; Ravenhill, 2008; Zugazaga, 2008). The family rupture has been experienced by several interviewees against the background of emotional stress and violent situations associated with the family. For thirteen respondents, the premature death of a close person triggered the rupture from the family surroundings. The sudden and often violent death of a ‘significant other’ was interpreted by some interviewees as a triggering factor of the process that led to continuous social degradation. Thus, Vasily (man, forty years old at the moment of the interview, hereafter M40) confessed that suicide by his father in the apartment that they were supposed to sell and then divide the amount between family members caused him a strong emotional shock that made him to lock up inside and de-socialise (he stayed in a monastery for eight months). The emotional shock may generate a feeling of guilt in the person who suffered the stress. In the case of Aliona (woman, thirty-four years old, hereafter W34), her brother’s death in an accident was associated post factum with the loss of the parents’ home: (…) if the apartment had not been sold, everything would have been different. Andmy brother wouldn’t have been hit by the car. After the car hit my brother, things went wrong. (…) Everything went from bad to worse. The family life of five women, out of sixteen, is associated with various forms of emotional trauma and abuse by parents, mainly made by the father (or stepfather) and by the (former) husband (Cramer, 2002; Pardeck, 2005; Wasserman and Clair, 2009; Richards et al., 2010). Psychological stress and abuses associated in the testimonies of these women with family surroundings prevented them to ask for help from family members. The disagreements caused by the splitting of inheritance or accusations of involvement in real estate fraud often poisoned the relationships with family members. According to a respondent who had been living for months in the Shelter—and this appears in interviews with seventeen respondents—litigations around the inherited dwelling have broken the family ties of many Shelter users: ‘Well, there was a three-room apartment, and there is nothing now. Again – the struggle of relatives. Everybody fought for this apartment! In the end, no one got it’ (Svetlana, W60). Interviewees feel disadvantaged over their relatives who have a higher social capital, and a critical resource in the transactions with family real estate property, especially in relation to public officials. For six respondents, dim and unconfessed feelings of guilt have undermined their relationships with family members. Twenty-eight respondents (out of sixty-five) prefer not to see their families and relatives, although they do not blame them. Some (fourteen interviewees) avoid encounters with kin and friends because of their disqualified status. Much less, they can afford to ask them for help. For male respondents, asking family members for help contradicts the social norm according to which men have a moral duty to support their family, including spouses and parents. Returning to the family is hampered by their inability to meet these (internalised) expectations (Höjdestrand, 2009; Ryabchuk, 2012). For many homeless with adult children (twenty-five respondents), the relationship with the latter is ambivalent. Seven respondents have a sense of affection and pride for their children, especially in contrast to their own disqualified status. In their understanding that is widely shared in the Moldovan society (but also in other societies in the region), the children’s success would be a proof of their fulfilment as parents (Pesmen, 2000; Caldwell, 2004; Höjdestrand, 2009). They usually deny any feeling of dissatisfaction with their children or other family members, although this mood could be deduced ‘between the lines’. The interviewees do not feel entirely legitimate to express discontent as they do not consider themselves irreproachable parents, children or spouses. A significant number of respondents have a history of alcohol abuse and violent behaviour. Half of homeless interviewees were suffering from chronic or moderate forms of alcoholism. This finding is consistent with other estimates (Doltu et al., 2016). Also, 23 per cent of the Shelter users had the experience of detention. From 2004 to 2017, 33.4 per cent of all the Shelter users were fifty-six years old and more, a share twice higher than in Chisinau’s general population (13.5 per cent were fifty-seven or sixty-two years old and more). Many of these ageing users made great efforts in the 1990s to provide care to their families and children, and are now virtually abandoned in this institution by their children. Moreover, the sons and daughters of four interviewees have been involved in the fraudulent sale of parents’ homes, and thus resulting in parents’ homelessness (and sometimes their own). In situations of suspicion of abandonment, the social worker from the Shelter contacts the family of elderly and disabled users to convince their members to take care of the person temporarily placed in the institution. The Social Assistance Law (No. 547 of 25 December 2003, paragraph 6, article 26) obliges the family members to take care of other family members in difficulty. Also, this law requires the local public authorities to provide the necessary support to persons or families in a situation of socio-economic vulnerability. Social workers also inform them about the social allowance for needy families (between 20 and 40 US dollars). The ex-prisoners and care leavers: a difficult reintegration For a significant part of the respondents, the rupture from the family surroundings and the home community occurred after their placement in some state institutions. Twenty-three per cent of the Shelter users had the experience of detention, and 11 per cent of them were care leavers—graduates of ‘internat-schools’ (a Soviet type of care and educational institutions for the orphan, abandoned, disabled or delinquent children). The penitentiary institution in Moldova (and in other countries in the region) acts through the de-socialisation of detainees and contributes little to their re-socialisation despite the recent reform of the probation and application of alternative penalties (Ardeleanu, 2009; Negură, 2018). Similarly, internat-schools made little to create and strengthen social bonds amongst their students in the absence of weak or non-existent relationships with the original family surroundings. As a result, the former detainees and care leavers reach the larger society with weak social support. Deprived of social support, some care leavers interviewed in this research make significant efforts to create couples and to raise children. Many of them (sixteen interviewees) feel vulnerable in these life projects, given the weak social support, limited social and cultural capital, and short-term institutional assistance they benefit from. Ecaterina (W32), raised in an internat-school, was married to a graduate of the same institution and former Shelter user. She has a child with him, but given the lack of a stable home, she gave him in the care of a foster family. In the context of divorce, Ecaterina and her husband have gone through a trial and could have been deprived of parental rights. Ecaterina proved her capacity and responsibility as a parent, using the services of a foster family to support her child. She continues to take various short-term jobs, regularly sending money to her child. Once she finds a dwelling and a source of steady income, she wants to recover her child. However, she sometimes feels discouraged by the perceived vulnerability of her situation. She stays in the Shelter for five years with interruptions, but her status there is fragile, as she is quite young and is said to be able to take care of herself and find a dwelling. She is keen to provide her child with the support that—like other care leavers—she was lacking and especially she wants to prevent her child from being placed in a youth institution. For respondents who did not have a family or who had a traumatic family experience, it is all the more difficult to find a family. The reluctance to create a family or to engage in a couple also comes from the disqualified status of the homeless person but also from the institutional stigma of a Shelter user. ‘Which young girl would look at a young boy who lives and works in a shelter for homeless?’ was wondering Valentin (M28), a care leaver who has been working at the Shelter’s canteen. Moreover, as long as they do not have a source of sufficient income to rent a decent home and have a family, they do not want to engage in any strong couple relationship. However, when homeless people engage in a couple relationship, this brings them the promise of a better and more stable life. Not only from our observations but also based on other research, a couple of socially vulnerable people can become a source of security (Dietrich-Ragon, 2015). For Vitalie (M21), engaging in a love relationship with Liuba (W18)—both care leavers and Shelter users during my research—was the promise of a marriage and immediate stabilisation. To prove to his beloved that he is a responsible person and capable of providing consistent support to their future family, Vitalie worked beyond the limits imposed by health as a handler at wholesale agricultural market, thus buying Liuba expensive gifts (clothes and hygiene products). Also, Vera (W60) and Stefan (M65) have been living together in the last decade in a fragile dwelling in a forest near Chisinau. Their couple was a means of mutual support and a source of emotional fulfilment, as confessed by Vera. However, the dependence of these couples on external and intrusive living conditions imposed some risks of housing instability. Thus, in the above case, Liuba disappeared at one point, being ‘taken’, according to Vitalie, by the members of a religious organisation offering lunch to Shelter users, without informing his friend. The Vera-Stefan couple became more fragile after they settled for a while in Vera’s apartment, now inherited by one of her sons. Vera’s son strongly condemned his mother’s relationship with Stefan, which threatened the very existence of the couple despite the good understanding between the life partners. Other couples formed between homeless seemed to be undermined by mistrust and precariousness. Under conditions of insufficient institutional support and fragile or non-existent family support, these ‘disposable’ couple relationships are yet a considerable source of support (Desmond, 2012). Friends and comrades, for better or worse Friends and acquaintances can provide ‘instrumental’ support—accommodation and food—in the first months after a person loses her home (Ravenhill, 2008; Shinn, 2010). In this case, the person uses her ‘social capital’ (Bourdieu, 1980) that she accumulated at a time when she was well integrated into the mainstream society. However, this capital is not inexhaustible: this is established on the principle of reciprocity, and thus is valid as long as the person is not only a recipient but also a potential donor of support. In line with the alienation and replacement theories (Eyrich et al., 2003), the homeless persons interviewed in this study gradually lose their initial social bonds in exchange of new yet weaker and less reliable support relationships amongst other socially vulnerable people. Some interviewees, especially those who deny any tie of belonging to the homeless as a group (seven of the twenty interviewees with whom this topic was discussed), denied involvement in friendly relations with other homeless people. Denying their identification with a stigmatised group, they apply to other people in the same condition the stigma attributed to them. According to four homeless interviewees, one cannot have ‘real’ friends amongst homeless people because they are not ‘trustworthy’ and are rather a source of risk than support. Such opinions come from a definition of friendship according to which a true friend should provide support without expecting anything in return. Some interviewees admitted that although they do not have real friends, they have at least comrades. When asked whether he had friends to count on, one respondent explained it as follows: Well, I have one friend, but that one … No, I did not find such friends by now. There are comrades, not friends. A friend, as I understand it, is someone who will follow you into the fire and the water, but just to get around and to help you on small things, I believe that this is not a friend. A friend and a comrade are two big differences. (Valery, M38) Unlike friendship, understood as a ‘soul relationship’, comradeship would be defined as rather practical functionality based on shared support (Pesmen, 2000; Caldwell, 2004). Comrades provide ‘instrumental’ and ‘informational’ support in day-to-day situations: to get food, to find temporary jobs, to accomplish various tasks and to grant mutual protection when needed. Ultimately, some comrades provide socio-emotional support. Alcohol sometimes catalyses this exchange of emotional support in a shared process of anaesthetising the suffering (Stephenson, 2006; Höjdestrand, 2009). After all, comradeship is an effective coping tactic, according to the resources that some people can afford in a situation of advanced precariousness. Comradeship is also an ‘emic’ concept used by the interviewees to define what researchers conceptualised in terms of ‘weak’ and ‘disposable’ ties used by urban poor to get short-term support without involving in strong relationships (Granovetter, 1977; Desmond, 2012). In the environment of homeless people from Chisinau, where the homelessness is a recent phenomenon, ‘comradeship’ with other homeless people might be a discursive strategy to deny the belonging to a stigmatised group. Researchers have highlighted the existence of behaviours considered supportive but which would have a therapeutically adverse effect, for example, in cases involving abusive drug or alcohol consumption (Antonucci, 1985; Wilcox and Vernberg, 1985; Eyrich et al., 2003; Curry and Abrams, 2015). This appreciation might be correct from the point of view coming from outside the group, that of the therapist or a social worker. From the internal group dynamics, a negative behaviour is the one that is nonreciprocal and thus does not contribute to building a relationship (Antonucci, 1985; Schlecker and Fleisher, 2013). However, for some homeless interviewees, especially those denying belonging to this group, the relationship with other persons of the same status is sometimes perceived as negative. In such cases, the person may seek to avoid lasting contacts in shelters and squats (Floyd and Ray, 2017). Conclusions The homeless in Moldova are people undergoing deep precariousness, aggravated by the loss of family ties and support from kin and friends before and after the loss of domicile. The effects of socio-economic transformations that Moldova and other countries in the region experienced in the 1990s and 2000s (especially pauperisation and massive migration) have distorted traditional intergenerational solidarities. Institutional support provided by the state and philanthropic associations to homeless people and other marginalised poor does not cover the real need for these services and is far from offsetting the inadequacy of informal social support. Moreover, a large proportion of homeless people (34 per cent of the Shelter users) came out from prisons and internat-schools. Marked by the Soviet legacy, these institutions de-socialise its users and do not prepare them for their reintegration into society and communities. The Shelter for homeless people is organised in a similar way to prisons and internat-schools, as it does not contribute to re-socialisation and strengthening of support relations amongst its users and between the latter and the sources of support from outside the institution. However, homeless people do form relationships and support networks amongst their peers in spite of or beyond the institutional order. These relationships, albeit ‘weak’ and temporary, are a significant source of support for the people who lack support from family and welfare institutions (Granovetter, 1977). Beyond dismantling of the previous social support system and the ‘cumulative rupture of social bonds’, the homeless people are building new social support networks with other homeless people based on ‘selective solidarity’ (looking for supportive relationships managing sentiments of distrust) and use of ‘disposable ties’ (between strangers) (Paugam, 2009; Desmond, 2012; Raudenbush, 2016). The relations of sociability, community and intimacy in the Shelter (and other social welfare institutions) are not only important for the users’ well-being but could also lead to a more efficient organisation. All people, including those in precarious situations and with a disrupted social support system, need not only to be helped out but also to be helpful (Paugam, 2008; Höjdestrand, 2009). Without explicit institutional measures to encourage the formation of social bonds amongst users and between the latter and individuals and groups outside the institution (e.g. by organising places and activities for mutual support and socialising), the social support network of these people will remain fragile, and their vulnerability will increase. In contrast, by encouraging mutual support and socialising, the institution would contribute to building social support network amongst users and would strengthen their self-esteem, autonomy and independence. Acknowledgements We thank Professor W. David Harrison from East Carolina University, Professor John Bolland from the University of Alabama, Dr Dorina Roșca from Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris and Professor Lilian Negura from University of Ottawa, who provided feedback and insight on the previous drafts of this article, although they may not agree with all of its interpretations. 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TI - Homelessness in a Post-Soviet City: Weak Social Support and Institutional Alienation
JO - The British Journal of Social Work
DO - 10.1093/bjsw/bcz091
DA - 2020-06-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/homelessness-in-a-post-soviet-city-weak-social-support-and-h0UNFh75CS
SP - 1
VL - Advance Article
IS - 
DP - DeepDyve
ER -