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In most nations homelessness remains a major injustice. A key response in Wales has been the introduction of a pioneering justiciable right to homelessness prevention and relief assistance. This paper explores the complexities of the new welfare bureaucracy this has created. We explore whether these housing rights invoke a paradox, whereby the positive impacts for citizens are accompanied by distancing and exclusion. The study reveals both a faceless bureaucracy characterised by processes of silencing and subordination propped up by tools of exclusion, particularly impenetrable paperwork, but also a system that can work to grant housing rights to those in need of support. There is no evidence for an utterly 'faceless tyrant' of a bureaucratic system, due to the often-inclusive ways that frontline staff operate, frequently at the margins of the law (Arendt 1970). Thus, this paper draws attention to the complexities inherent in a rights-based homelessness system and the paradoxical nature of attempting to grant housing rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paradigm shift in international homelessness policies towards a prevention focus has resulted in proven benefits to society and most importantly to individuals at risk of homelessness. Across the developed world, homelessness prevention is being pursued with vigour alongside existing homelessness interventions and yet there has been no pause for a systematic evaluation of how prevention fits alongside existing systems. Wales provides the first case where homelessness services have been systematically reviewed since the prevention turn. This paper critically examines the implementation of homelessness prevention in Wales, identifying how deficiencies echo emerging global concerns about the prevention turn. Drawing upon evidence gathered during a review of homelessness legislation in Wales, the paper examines the extent to which emerging proposals for legislative change will overcome problems with prevention. The emerging Welsh homelessness prevention and alleviation duty is seen as a desirable and replicable model of prevention, albeit it offers no panacea to the social tragedy of homelessness. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Research on child traders in the Peruvian city of Cusco highlights the roles that children play, revealing that children work as traders, either alone or alongside an adult, in 13 per cent of all observed informal trading units in the city centre. More specifically, on the streets, children comprise an even higher proportion: 21 per cent of traders. Interviews with the child street traders reveal the children's agency, with children setting their own prices, occupying different sites to maximise the efficiency of their trading activities, and with those of different ages and gender adopting different roles within an apparent trader hierarchy. Given their considerable resilience to a large police presence, the child traders are entrenched in the city centre, and achieving the policy goal of removing them from the central streets is likely to require consumer education against buying from children, as well as cooperation from the parents and children themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]