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homeless; Street people; dwell; Phenomenological-existential research
Thinking about living is something that refers to the idea of housing or place. However,
for Heidegger's existential phenomenology, dwelling is the expression of being-and-
being-in-the-world itself and refers to how man, in relating to his possibilities of being-
in-the-world, constructs the world Which surrounds it. Street people make up a
heterogeneous population group that has in common extreme poverty, fragile or broken
family ties and the lack of regular conventional housing. Considering that this
population is the subject of current discussion in our society and of interest to several
areas of knowledge and that for Heidegger's existential phenomenology the notion of
dwelling says of being-and-being-in-the-world itself, The purpose of this study was to
understand what senses street people attribute to their experience of living on the streets.
Surveys of phenomenological and existential orientation are directed towards the
experience, considering that this perspective emphasizes the existential dimension of
human living and the meanings experienced by the subject in his being-in-the-world.
This is a phenomenological-existential research in which two adult street people, a 42-
year-old man and a 25-year-old woman, both of whom were Potiguares, were
interviewed. The interviews took place in the streets and were interpreted in the light of
the Heideggerian hermeneutics. One of the contributions of this study to the field of
Psychology, Health in general and Public Policies was to present ways of life of people
in a street situation from a phenomenological reading. Such a reading considers the
existence and the mode of being of these people as beings-in-the-world, allowing
reflections on how they attribute their experience of living on the streets. The interview
reports and their analysis allow us to say that the people interviewed attribute to the
streets different meanings from those to which the representations of these places can
refer us. For some people, the street becomes a place of refuge and welcome, especially
for those who try to avoid a situation of suffering and violence. The narratives also
showed that street people have life projects, plans for the future, and dreams to be
achieved. Finally, the street becomes an inhospitable place, just like the world,
unveiling the human condition, insofar as it reveals the provisionality and
indeterminacy characteristic of human existence.