The Outcomes of Homeless Mobilization: The Influence of Organization, Disruption, Political Mediation, and Framing

Abstract

This article contributes to a more systematic understanding of movement outcomes by analyzing how organizational, tactical, political, and framing variables interact and combine to account for differences in the outcomes attained by 15 homeless social movement organizations (SMOs) active in eight U.S. cities. Using qualitative comparative analysis to assess ethnographically derived data on the 15 SMOs, the study highlights the importance of organizational viability and the rhetorical quality of diagnostic and prognostic frames for securing outcomes while identifying a contingent relationship between tactics and political environment. The analysis suggests that there are multiple pathways leading to movement outcome attainment, and therefore unidimensional rather than combinatorial and interactive approaches are misguided.