1 JULY 2009
NO 1455
Street children
Child streetism as a concept is generally reserved to identify children in the South who engage regularly in economic activity in geographic areas that are formally designated for the use of the public. In the North, children with similar characteristics are more commonly called "homeless", "runaways", or "delinquents", terms that carry quite different connotations. At the start of the 1990's, it was estimated that street children comprised about 5 percent of all children in the South (Taçon, 1992). This number is probably exaggerated, however, since child streetism, as will be shown below, is an urban phenomenon and, apart from Latin America and the Caribbean, over half the South's population is rural (IFAD, 1993, p. 1). A more realistic number is half of one percent of all children, and possibly much lower.
The roots of child streetism lie in macro- and micro-poverty. At the macro level, this occurrence mainly reflects many families' inability to meet the cost of even the most basic commodities, and governments' inability to support these families in child rearing or, in some cases, their ideological reluctance to do so. Another reason is the poor school systems, which fail to act as a channel of upward mobility. In part, this is due to a chronic shortage of places in schools, especially, but not only, beyond primary education, and the phenomenon – even where places are available – of teachers abandoning classrooms to work elsewhere to supplement their low wages, which often remain unpaid for months (Herbert, 1996a). Other school-related factors are the irrelevance of much of the local curricula that try to emulate the North rather than fit local conditions (including their medium of teaching), and the insistence that children attend classes in uniforms and pay non-tuition fees that their families can ill afford.
At a more personal level, it is generally accepted that poverty weakens the capacity of adults to cope with daily contingencies, which, in turn, increases the value they place on their children's obedience and maintenance of the home – and these expectations help to engender child abuse (McLoyd & Wilson, 1991). Some children find the situation difficult to bear and seek, therefore, greater freedom elsewhere, although most research has shown that at least where street children are concerned, the desire for freedom from home is usually secondary to economic need (Dewees & KIees, 1995; Rizzini & Lusk, 1995; Maphala, 1996).
Unlike other categories of children, who might be identified, for example, by their physical or mental abilities, street children cannot be described by precise criteria. Rather, "street children" is a generic term that denotes young people with a special relationship to the street, their families, and the public at large.
The overwhelming majority of street children, typically over 90 percent, fall into a category usually called "children in (vs. of) the street" (Glauser, 1990). These are young people who spend a significant part of their time on the streets because this is where they work and socialize, having carved out for themselves niches at the low end of the subterranean (informal) economy. Most often, this work consists of easy-entry occupations that allow considerable autonomy and require little capital. Typical examples are street vending and personal services such as portering and running errands, as well as less prepossessing activities like begging and the recycling of garbage. Contrary to popular thought, however, none of the children in this group are runaways or abandoned; they all have homes to return to and maintain daily, or almost daily, contact with their immediate families or with other relatives who look after them (Rizzini & Lusk, 1995). Indeed, it is their parents who often provide them with the start-up capital they require to establish themselves in the street (Ghana National Commission on Children, 1991).
In contrast, only a small number of street children Рusually only 2 to 7 percent Рhave severed all, or most, contact with their biological families (Blanc, 1991; Ta̤on, 1991, 1991a). These are the "children of the street." This is because they both work and reside much of the time in the streets. Even in this group, however, some children often shelter with informal guardians, and some 40 percent contribute, albeit only occasionally, to their immediate family's budget (Blanc, 1994). The children of the street are usually also older than their counterparts in the street (Lusk, 1992).
Yet perhaps the most significant trait of street children is their relationship to the public. Instead of using the street and other public arenas chiefly as conduits between private pursuits – as is the custom of most middle and upper-class people – street children spend much of their time in these places and so are publicly visible. Their very presence challenges bourgeois society, which governs itself such that children intrude as little as possible on the adult world and distinguishes sharply between the public and the private, thus generating pressure that they disappear from view.
ARNON BAR-ON
Bar-On, A. (1998). So what is wrong with being a
street child? Child and Youth Care Forum, 27, 3. pp. 202-205.
REFERENCES
Blanc C.S. (1991). Street and working children – Field perspectives. Innocenti Update, no. 10, Florence: UNICEF International Child Development Centre.
Blanc, C. S. (1994). Urban children in distress: Global predicaments and innovative strategies. Yverdon. Gordon and Breach.
Dewees, A., & Klees, S. J. (1995). Social movements and the transformation of national policy: Street and working children in Brazil. Comparative Education Review, 39, 1. pp.76-100.
Ghana National Commission on Children. (1991). Annual report, 1990. Accra.
Glauser, B. (1990). Street children: Deconstructing a construct. In A. James & A. Prout (Eds.), Constructing and reconstructing childhood: Contemporary issues in the sociological study of childhood. London. The Falmer Press.
Herbert, R. (1996a). Children play the leading role in Nigeria's culture of begging. The Sunday Independent, August 8.
International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). (1993). The state of world rural poverty. Rome. IFAD.
Lusk, M. W (1992). Street children of Rio de Janeiro. International Social Work, 35, 4. pp. 293-305.
Maphala, T. (1996). Street children in Swaziland. Inside Africa, 26, 3. pp. 282-288.
McLoyd, V C., & Wilson, L. (1991). The strain of living poor: Parenting, social support, and child mental health. In A. C. Huston (Ed.), Children in poverty: Child development and public policy, Cambridge. Cambridge University Press.
Rizzini, L, & Lusk, M. W (1995). Children in the streets: Latin America's lost generation, Children and Youth Services Review, 17, 3. pp.391-400.
Taçon, P (1991). Reap a hundred harvests: A study on street children in three urban centers of Zambia (mimeographed).
Taçon, P (1991a). Survey on street children in three urban centers of Namibia (mimeographed).
Taçon, P (1992). Marco Jemuse and the Malevolent Monsters: A programme for children in especially difficult circumstances in Africa 1993-2000. Paper for presentation to the Organization of African Unity and its International Partners, November 25-27.
