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This article discusses how the gender-based violence of homelessness contributes to young women engaging in bodily alliances with men as a strategy for physical protection. The embedding of individualized and postfeminist discourses through the conditions of neoliberalism and the structural disadvantage of homelessness have meant that young women are required to adopt self-regulatory practices and take personal responsibility for their physical safety. Drawing on Bourdieu's social capital theory and its development by Skeggs and Shilling, and based on qualitative research undertaken with fifteen young women who had experienced homelessness in Australia, I suggest that feminine capital is mobilized through necessity by young homeless women through the formation and maintenance of intimate relationships with men to access a sense of safety in an environment that is hostile to the female body. However, as the narratives presented here demonstrate, the value and privilege ascribed to (certain) male bodies is only accessible vicariously to young women, it is inherently precarious, it can undermine access to other types of capital and these intimate relationships can also be a source of gender-based violence.

Social justice approaches that work towards eliminating youth homelessness with a sole focus on material needs overlook the significance of non-material aspects, such as the impact of social exclusion and stigma on individuals' subjectivities. The lack of social legitimacy associated with homelessness is exacerbated under neoliberal conditions, with the shift from social to individual responsibility positioning those unable to achieve the normative transition to adulthood as social failures. We draw on interviews with young homeless women in Australia to extend the emerging sociological focus on the relational aspects of homelessness through a social justice lens. We analyse the association between subjectivity, stigma and neoliberalism, and draw on Iris Marion Young's theory of justice to highlight how these shape experiences of homelessness. We conclude that overcoming homelessness requires policies and practices that give a greater focus to non-material aspects of homelessness through an emphasis on empowerment, self-respect and autonomy.