Abstract

In a contemporary world in which the individual status seem to amount to connection processes more than stratification within social systems, the condition of marginality becomes a radical experience able to throw the involved actors out of society. To this end, the figure of the homeless is considered emblematic, as its existential trajectory represents the last frontier of the process of "disaffiliation" identified by Robert Castel, where the polarity "included-excluded" aims at defining two different worlds not communicating to one another. In this scenario, the organisations aiming at opposing homelessness take a specific role and location in the landscape of social policies, mainly due to the kind of needs expressed by marginalised people. This publication shows the results of a national broader context survey on the world of severe marginalization of adults in Italy, with particular reference to the homelesses, carried out by fio.Psd - Italian Federation of Organizations for homelesses, Istat - national Institute of Statistics, Caritas and the Italian Ministry of Labour. Starting from the peculiarities of the homeless, the research has the knowledge objective to identify the processes and dynamics that characterise the organisations that take on responding to their needs. Specifically, this survey will present a classification of these organisations, using the data originated from the national survey. The value of this procedure is to be found in the opacity of the subject, whose comprehension seems to require intellectual efforts to match the tiles that compose it.