Fitting In and Fighting Back: Stigma Management Strategies among Homeless Kids

Using data collected during a four‐year ethnographic study, this article examines the stigma management strategies of kids who are homeless in the San Francisco Bay area. We focus specifically on strategies of inclusion and exclusion. Strategies of inclusion are attempts by homeless kids to establish harmonious relationships with both peers and strangers. The most common are forging friendships, passing, and covering. Strategies of exclusion are aggressive and nonconciliatory attempts to gain social acceptance. They include verbal denigration and physical and sexual posturing. Some of these strategies successfully protect the kids’ sense of self, while other strategies had the unintended effect of reinforcing their spoiled identities. We argue that these stigma management strategies are both informed by and interpreted through their disadvantaged social structural location.