Ivan Lind Christensen

Exit from Homelessness

This article examines the sociodemographic conditions and the factors influencing the exit of homelessness for three groups of marginalized homeless individuals in Denmark: drug addicts, alcohol abusers, and those with mental health problems. Previous research in the field has only looked superficially at exit of homelessness for these groups. The data used are part of a consultancy report made for The Ministry of Social Affairs published in May 2005. The study is based on a survey conducted in 2004 with 842 individuals who were homeless in 1997, combined with register data from 2002-3 and going back to 1977. We are, therefore, able to examine a broad and detailed set of individual characteristics. Some notable results are that women have a higher probability of surmounting homelessness, public debt is related to a lower probability of exit from homelessness, and a lower or moderate number of convictions is related to a higher probability of finding a way out from homelessness. We discuss these results and the results of previous research in connection with the welfare state and the various public assistance measures targeted at the homeless.

Routes of Knowledge: Toward a Methodological Framework for Tracing the Historical Impact of International Organizations

Recent trends in the historiography of international organizations are occupied with tracing their historical impact on national contexts. There is, however, no consensus on how to conduct this type of analysis methodologically. This article examines the methodological challenges arising from this type of research. While a great deal of inspiration can be gathered from contemporary impact assessment studies, substantial conceptual and theoretical development is needed to make the idea of “impact” operational and feasible in historical studies. It is, we argue, through the focus on impact levels, space, and movement that the idea of tracing the historical impact of international organizations becomes a promising research agenda.

Lethal differences: a short history of the concepts of wealth and poverty in Danish epidemiological writings, 1858-1914.

Through a study of the history of the concepts of wealth and poverty, this paper investigates the onset of a transition in the conceptual architecture of epidemiological research concerning social differences in mortality rates from 1858 to 1914. It raises the question as to what the concepts of wealth and poverty meant to those who used them and what objects of interventions the conceptual architecture surrounding the concepts enabled the researchers to create. It argues that a transition began in the late 19th century in which an important framework for the understanding of causal relations behind the mortality patterns changed and that this change in turn influenced the scope of what was conceived as relevant objects of intervention.