At Home in the Street

A Place in Society? Strengthening Livelihood Opportunities for Street Children – A Rights-Based Approach

“…The problems confronting children of the street are well documented from the perspective of researchers; they include lack of shelter and associated poor hygiene and sanitation, poor diet, poor access to health care and education, sexual abuse and the associated vulnerability to sexually transmitted infections including HIV, substance abuse, including glue, dagga and alcohol (Chetty, 1995;Hecht, 1998;Swart-Kruger & Richter, 1997). This would reflect concern for basic rights such as a decent standard of living, adequate health care and basic education.…”

“…Poverty is cited by many as being the main driving force behind increasing numbers of children migrating to the streets (Chetty, 1995;Hecht, 1998;Serrokh, 2006). Global and local pressures to become internationally competitive have left South Africa with increasing levels of poverty and unemployment.…”

Contradictory and Intersecting Patterns of Inclusion and Exclusion of Street Youth in Salvador, Brazil

“…A quantitative study in a favela in Northeast Brazil revealed that by the age of 18, nearly half of the residents were neither in school nor at work (Cardoso & Verner, 2006). Livelihood possibilities are not neutral, but engender processes of inclusion and exclusion, and bureaucracy, corruption, and nepotism are common obstacles for poor young Brazilians who seek formal employment (Hecht, 1998). Many favelado youth depend on self-employment and livelihood opportunities in the informal sector (Menezes-Filho & Scorzafave, 2009).…”

“…Most importantly, as mentioned above, city centres provide livelihood opportunities that are not available in the favelas. This is often enabled by supportive social networks of mainstream citizens, also called fregueses, as a young street dweller (24-year-old) stated; "I have a lot of friendships there [on the street], who always wanted my best, gave me an opportunity" (see also Conticini, 2005;Hecht, 1998). The majority of the homeless in this study engaged in intermittent informal jobs, such as minding cars and running errands, depending on trusting social bonds-although atypical-with residents and businesspeople (Ursin, 2012).…”

Street Children as Researchers: Critical Reflections on a Participatory Methodological Process in the “Growing Up on the Streets” Research Project in Africa

“…The impact of the complexity of family and social relationships on policy and practice is further increased by the discursive applications of 'street' which is used both to describe the physical thoroughfare but also symbolically to denote an arena, and by extension a person, that is outside of society and without formal connection. Therefore the problematic nature of the term 'street children' is acknowledged: it locates children in the street (Hecht, 1998), which is static, excluding the capacity of children to move between different social and spatial environments (Lucchini, 1996) and it associates the negative characteristics of street environments to childhood (Conticini, 2004). This has particular importance for research into the lives of street children as it underpins a simplistic binary where 'on' the street represents danger and a departure from normative social behaviours and 'off' the street is indicative of problems resolved and counted as a legitimate output from a service intervention.…”