Why Neoliberalism (as a means of imposing stigma on homelessness)?

In short, the Neoliberal market is a competitive one. By virtue of this, people who lack the skills needed to be competitive in the market are easily forgotten about.

In a discussion on homeless I was having with some friends at a bar, one of my buddies said something along the lines of “If you’ve got two feet and a heart that beats, get a job”. It would have taken me too long to sit there and explain the thousand things wrong with that statement, but the response I gave him was something similar to what Gaetz and O’Grady (2013) said in their article about homeless youth and employment.

“Just think about the things you need to get a job. First, employers love when their employees have an address. Second, a phone is pretty much an unspoken requirement for most employers, and thirdly, where are they going to make a resume? What skills and experience would they put on it? All their degrees and diplomas?”

“It’s not my fault he didn’t finish school” my friend replied.

“It’s probably not his either” I said back. Followed by a short silence.

Now, you’re probably thinking “Kristoffer, you hang out with short-minded dumbasses”. And you’re right. In a sense, I myself am a short-minded dumbass, but in my buddy’s defense, he was mostly trying to be funny and he doesn’t full-heartedly believe his own statement. Nobody in my group of friends did.

The problem is, some people actually have this attitude towards poverty, and these people go to bars with their friends (probably shorter-minded, bigger dumbasses than my friends and I) and preach this rhetoric to five people that will agree, and they each tell another group who will tell another. This is how stigmatization is perpetuated, and indeed it’s all coming from an standpoint that is completely ignorant to the underprivileged.

References

Gaetz, S., & O'Grady, B. (2015). Why Don’t You Just Get a Job? Homeless Youth, Social Exclusion and Employment Training. Retrieved 2015. Web.