Introduction:
Homes, Places and Spaces in the Construction of Street Children and Street Youth

Judith Ennew
Centre for Family Research
University of Cambridge

Jill Swart-Kruger
Department of Anthropology
University of South Africa

Citation: Ennew, Judith and Jill Swart-Kruger. “Introduction: Homes, Places and Spaces in the Construction of Street Children and Street Youth.” Children, Youth and Environments 13(1), Spring 2003. Retrieved [date] from http://colorado.edu/journals/cye.

Street children and street youth have been the focus of intense academic interest and welfare concern for over two decades, resulting in what has been called "a prodigious outpouring of texts" (Rizzini 1996, 226). Thus it is not surprising that the papers in this special issue reflect and, in many cases refer to, a "paradigm shift" that has occurred during this period. Both the academic and field report sections in this issue demonstrate that this shift has taken place at both theoretical and practical levels. In the academic sphere, the discourse on street children has been transformed by considering the elements of time and space, as well as theories that individuals are active agents in the construction of social reality. At the level of practice, in policy and the design of programs, a major influence has been the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which establishes children as subjects of rights and active agents (van Beers 2003; O'Kane 2003; Panter-Brick 2003; and Shanahan 2003, among others in this issue).

Paradigms always shift unevenly, this case in several spheres. The global recognition of a “street children problem,” which began by relying on Latin American models, has become broader. Definitions, such as the frequently used (and often misused) UNICEF distinction between children "on" and "of" the street, have been altered in view of new information. Modes of practice have been challenged by insights and experiences from other continents. Thus it is both interesting and useful that this issue contains information from Azerbaijan, Brazil, Colombia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria, Nepal, Russia, Tajikistan and Zambia, as well as global considerations. There are now fewer attempts to describe a "typical street child" although such constructions do exist and are frequently replicated with a seemingly ruthless rhetoric in the media (Rosemberg and Andrade 1999). As Ebigbo's account of child density studies in different Nigerian cities shows, it is not possible to refer meaningfully to "the Nigerian Street Child," much less to "the African Street Child" (Ebigbo 2003, this issue; Ennew 2003, this issue). One factor underlines this with particular emphasis: although attention previously focused almost exclusively on boys working and living on the street, street girls are now an increasing subject of study and concern (Rurevo and Bourdillon 2003, this issue; Hansson 2003, this issue).

Explanatory frameworks have also become more sophisticated than earlier assumptions (and teleological research based on assumptions) that street children are either "throwaways" or "runaways" because of poverty and family breakdown. Such conjectures stigmatize impoverished families, blaming them for collapsing under the stress of undefined "poverty," and fail to grasp that most poor families do not break down, nor do they inevitably abandon or discard their children. As made clear with respect to child labor in a recent report from the International Labour Organization (ILO), three levels of causal analysis must be taken into account: immediate, underlying and structural (ILO 2002). At the immediate level, the reason why a child may leave home and go to work or live on the streets could be a sudden drop in family income; loss of support from an adult family member due to illness, death or abandonment; or an episode of domestic violence. Underlying causes could be chronic impoverishment; cultural expectations, such as the idea that a boy should go to work on the streets as soon as he is able; desire for consumer goods; or the "lure of bright city lights." Structural causes consist of factors such as development shocks, structural adjustment, regional inequalities and social exclusion. Current multi-level approaches to causality are underpinned by a greater understanding of childhood, which incorporates both its constructed nature and the understanding that it is experienced in different ways by children at various ages and with diverse characteristics.

Thus, paradigms have shifted from considering individual children as the site of problems- either as victims or as delinquents- to the conception of children interacting with a variety of environments, including modern, urban thoroughfares of all kinds. This has been partly due to the intervention of geographers in street children research, bringing with them ideas of time and space to inform a discourse that was previously dominated by ideas of dysfunction, pathology and psychological breakdown (see for example Beazley 2003, this issue; Young and Barrett 2001). Within the social sciences, a significant influence has been Riccardo Lucchini's use of the theory of structuration from the work of Anthony Giddens, which considers spatial and temporal elements in combination with Weberian concepts of the social construction of meaning (Giddens 1984; Lucchini 1996c). Thus it is now generally acknowledged that children actively construct their worlds, and that street children's worlds cannot be distinguished by a simple division between "home" and “street," but rather with respect to several of what Lucchini calls "domains." These include public and private spaces; institutions such as the justice and police systems; government and civil society programs; groups of adults such as street educators, market vendors and other street workers; as well as such varied "inside" spaces as prisons, orphanages, cinemas and shopping malls.

The variety of domains is often culturally determined- not only by what is on offer by way of environments, but also the meanings they have. Thus modern city centers and shopping malls have different meanings and mappings for home-based and street-based children, by night and by day, for adults and for children. For example, in Uruguay, because there is no institutionalized violence or danger on the streets, there is little need to form support groups. Thus children appear to view the streets as a series of spaces between those offered by family and social institutions to a greater extent than is the case in other Latin American countries (Lucchini 1996a). Even in the early days of concern for and study of street children it was recognized that “street" has a variety of meanings, incorporated in the definition quoted by several contributors to this issue: "the street (in the widest sense of the word) including unoccupied dwellings and wasteland, etc." (Lusk 1994,161, quoted in Rizzini and Butler 2003, this issue).

Homes

Family unit : Abandoned street child alone
Home : Street
Social : Anti-social
Moral : Amoral
Domestic normality : Street deviance
Normal (loved) home-based child : Unloved street child

Morally-powerful social constructions of family, home, domesticity, and childhood could not exist without the construction of the "other"- the danger of the street, the amorality of street life and, above all, “street children” who are outside the domestic sphere and challenge the order of social existence (Aptekar 1988; Aptekar 1989; Aptekar and Heinonen 2003, this issue; Boyden 1990; Holland 1992). This is the basis of the assumption that street children must be living antisocial, immoral, chaotic lives and are thus necessarily a public order problem; street children are in conflict not only with the law but also the whole of society (van Beers 2003, this issue). Evidence to the contrary seldom informs program design. Thus, the overwhelming tendency is to force children to sever links with their street support networks, and to regard their experiences on the street as bad or worthless. Program literature, particularly from the 1980s, frequently referred to "giving children back their childhood" as if children from impoverished homes had ever "had" the socially constructed "Western" childhood of play, school and absence of responsibility.

Far from being chaotic, the outcast world of street children and street youth tends to have its own networks, groups and hierarchies. For the city of Yogyakarta in Central Java, Harriot Beazley (2003, this issue) describes a highly socialized street child existence, rather than one that is "discarded and non-socialized;" Yogyakarta groups are internally monitored and policed. Desiree Hansson describes similar “stroller" bands, with internal hierarchies and fixed territories, in Cape Town (Hansson 2003, this issue). Both researchers also illustrate the different positions and groupings for street girls, demonstrating the gendered nature of street space.

Street children's co-residential groups are sometimes referred to as “surrogate families" (for example in Hansson 2003; Rizzini and Butler 2003; Shanahan 2003, all this issue). The role of the street group is significant in terms of physical survival. Sharing resources and information is vital and a group is often a means of protection from violence and police harassment. Because people in authority such as social workers and the police cannot be trusted, the group is often the only source of support and care when members are ill and injured (Aptekar and Heinonen 2003, this issue; Swart 1990). Street lifestyle and networks develop a subculture that provides both reference group and collective identity (Awad 2002; Beazley 2003, this issue). These tend to have a broader reach than nuclear, or even extended, families; members of a street child subculture draw newcomers into the fold, teach them survival skills and socialize them.

Yet it would be unwise to assume that groups, bands and gangs are universal features of street children's lives. Lewis Aptekar and Paola Heinonen found that street groups in Addis Ababa are loose-knit and neither socially nor emotionally supportive. They suggest that the children's strong desire for personal autonomy prevents bonding and the development of ties of mutual responsibility (Aptekar and Heinonen 2003, this issue). Irene Rizzini and Udi Mandel Butler also question the use of the term “street group" because this implies a bonded and closed unit. Children on the streets of Rio de Janeiro often have friendships that pre-date their street lives. They help friends and relatives on the street whenever they can, regardless of the group of children with whom they spend their time. Street groups in Rio de Janeiro are fluid, swelling or diminishing in numbers daily, depending on the circumstances. Nevertheless, children sometimes refer loosely to their groups as "families" when they reflect on the supportive and affective ties they have developed with each other (Butler and Rizzini 2003, this issue).

Children's interactions with the multiple factors of their street environments develop the shared understandings, and often special language, of “subculture" (Beazley 2003, this issue) or even a "new culture" (Shanahan 2003, this issue). This cultural approach has long been taken in studies of street youth in developed countries, following from classic studies in the USA (Whyte 1943; Liebow 1967). In these discourses, both place (the street corner) and constructed subcultures exist outside homes and families but, in general, the children and youth are not homeless. For them home still continues in some sense, to use the apocryphal sociological definition, as a "haven in a heartless world."

The term "home," although based on the construction of the "other" as "homeless," does not have a unitary composition. Ebigbo points out that it can refer to individuals' own homes, to institutional "Homes" such as orphanages, or to any place of residence, such as a Koranic school (Ebigbo 2003, this issue). As Aptekar and Heinonen describe with respect to Addis Ababa, Claire O'Kane for India, and any number of other urban researchers, "home" may not be permanent, in terms of the site, the inhabitants or the materials of construction. When homes are simply sites on the pavement they are factually on the street. When children from rag picking families return to their dwellings they literally take the street with them in the bags of rubbish they sort out for sale. Indeed, Patrick Shanahan suggests that street children in Ghana who go home at night always take the street figuratively into the home. By contrast, in Moscow, as Svetlana Stephenson has shown, economic and social reversals have rendered the street, rather than private space, the dominant environment of urban life (Stephenson 2002).

"Homeless" is currently a key descriptor for children who live and work on the streets, replacing the stigmatizing label “street children.” Yet research has consistently failed to show either high numbers of orphaned or abandoned children living and working on the streets, or children who have permanently severed ties with their families (see for example, Aptekar 1994; Aptekar and Heinonen 2003, this issue; Baker 1998; Butler and Rizzini 2003, this issue; Ennew 1986; Glauser 1990; Hansson 2003, this issue; Lusk 1992; Patel 1983; Rajani and Kudrati 1994). This is even echoed by governments of developed countries which deny the existence of homeless young people by saying "they have homes to go to." There is also evidence that children who seem to have severed all bonds with vital family members, because of long absences, abuse, or rejection, may still retain emotional home ties that they seek to re-establish temporarily or permanently (Baker 1998; Hansson 2003, this issue; Swart 1988). Popular fantasy and security analysis alike claim that children orphaned by HIV/AIDS are swelling the ranks of street children and forming robber bands, or being recruited by non-governmental armed groups. Although this is an untested hypothesis, non-governmental organizations, academic researchers and international agencies state this as "fact" on public platforms, in academic literature, and the media (Bray 2003; Clarke 2000). Some orphaned children will undoubtedly end up on the streets, but there is evidence that the psycho-social impact of HIV/AIDS on children includes reduced self-esteem, anxiety and depression (Daniel 2003; Forsyth et al. 1996), which reduces the likelihood of them having the confidence to beg from or rob the public.

In addition to being constructed by public discourse as homeless, street children and street youth are frequently designated as having no family, or as being victims of "family breakdown." This is not surprising given the way popular myth and policy alike act as if there is some kind of ideal entity called "The Family"- a nuclear form that bears little resemblance to the variety of kinship arrangements within which people have lived and do live (La Fontaine 1990). The literature on street children shows that they come from every conceivable family type including from homes containing no kin or affines at all (Swart 1988; Espínola et al. 1988). According to the literature, there appear to be striking numbers of street children with step-parents, from female-headed households and who have escaped from state institutions or fostering arrangements; but this is difficult to confirm as this kind of research tends not to use comparative control groups. Rizzini and Butler suggest that we should perhaps talk of new family structures rather than family breakdown. Nevertheless, the notion of "The Family" is a key reference point when people conceptualize children and childhood. Children who live outside their families are the deviant "other," and thus the presence of children on city streets must be constructed as the result of dysfunctional families.

Spaces, Places and Power

As Claire O'Kane points out, it is incorrect to assume a total separation between adults and children on the street, children may not be supervised by adults but they are influenced by and influence adults, interacting constantly with them in different domains (O'Kane 2003, this issue). Within the mutual construction of meaning between children and adults, the street (in the widest sense) is not only gendered space but also a political space, in which marches and demonstrations take place. It can be appropriated for interventions- through the use of walls for posting newspapers, for example, (O'Kane 2003, this issue) or for street theatre in which the boundaries of a designated space are decided by the shade of a tree (Salami and van Beers 2003, this issue). Nevertheless, some boundaries amount to unseen barriers that retain street children within the prisons of poverty and exclusion. Thus, they are vulnerable to abuses of juvenile justice systems; cannot access education (or quality education); cannot access health services; can only find the most casual employment; and even if they do earn sufficient money, cannot easily access accommodation (Thomas de Benitez 2003, this issue).

Although such barriers are invisible, street children and street activities are by their very nature visible, which to a certain extent explains the negative constructions of adults and the connection with public (dis)order, for (in the widest sense) street space is criminal space, especially at night. Streets may provide supervised places for authorized marches and demonstrations, but they are also the location of "the mob," about which respectable society has considerable terror (Stedman-Jones 1971). At night virtually the only legitimate beings on the streets are the police, perpetually patrolling on behalf of respectable, home-living families, and attempting to drive out unlawful elements such as criminals, prostitutes and street children. In this construction, Michel Foucault's idea of "the gaze" becomes a useful hermeneutical tool. Foucault's original conception of the gaze arose from considering the supervisory efficiency of the design of "panopticon" prisons, in which all prisoners can be simultaneously observed from a single, central point (Foucault 1979). Adult supervision of street children is a similar eye of power, through which adults/observers exercise control over children, through mechanisms of inspection and surveillance that also encompass "homes." Street children (the observed) are thus denied either power or agency. Forced to internalize either negative constructions of themselves as victims and delinquents, or positive images as heroes at liberty, they can resist only through manipulation of these images (Foucault 1980; Butler and Rizzini 2003, this issue).

Time and Transformation

Perhaps the most useful idea developed in the course of the recent paradigm shift is that street children have "careers" on the street: moving out of home space, into street space, and through a variety of stages, activities and images- depending on experience and increasing age- to the processes of leaving the street, which are not unitary and far from being always the result of adult intervention (Beazley 2003, this issue; Butler and Rizzini 2003, this issue; Invernizzi 2001; Lucchini 1996 a/b).

Time may be a more important factor in determining the categorization of street children and street youth. This can refer to the length of time living on the street- short-stay, transient or long stay (Richter and van der Walt 2003, this issue). It can also be important to consider the age of a child moving from home to street, and also to understand that adolescence is a moment of "career crisis" (Beazley 2003, this issue). According to the supervisory gaze, the transformation from victim to delinquent occurs as time changes children into youth. Roles on the street also change. It is easier for small children to make a living by begging, or begging-like activities such as windshield washing. Street youth find that their income generation potential is limited by increased age and size, their role often being reduced to supervising and protecting younger children in a street group. They also find that public tolerance of their street presence is reduced and life on the street may become increasingly dangerous for them.

It is also worth remembering that street youth share the present-orientation of other adolescents, but perhaps to an even greater degree. Thus HIV/AIDS is a "distant threat" compared to police harassment and day-to-day survival. Although adult interventions may construe sex education for HIV prevention as a major concern, this is unlikely to coincide with the constructions of street children's priorities (Kruger and Richter 2003, this issue).

Dirt and Danger

Purity : Danger
Home : Street
Hygiene : Dirt
Cozy : Unsafe
Children : Vermin

Through this analysis, some researchers and activists have used the term "children out of place" to refer to street children, in order to highlight the importance of the social constructions of the street and "dirt" as (in Douglas' phrase) "matter out of place." This focuses on the constructed nature of both "dirt" and “street children” in order to explain the extraordinary violence children suffer through being constructed as the negative "other" to all that is inside, authorized and correct; an "other" that must be annihilated in order to preserve social life (see, for example, the papers in Childhood 3(2)). Many responses to street children, especially from governments but more recently from civil society, have been preoccupied with social hygiene, cleaning the streets of "vermin," and have portrayed street children as a social disease (See for example, Nieuwenhuys 2001).

Nevertheless, it can be argued that streets are indeed "dirty" and unhealthy environments in a factual, demonstrable sense. Strangely, there has been limited interest in the health of street children compared to the "prodigious outpouring" on occurrence (Panter-Brick 2003; Rizzini and Butler 2003; Richter and van der Walt 2003, all this issue). With respect to physical health, the evidence tends to show that street children and youth suffer largely from "the normal diseases of childhood," perhaps more frequently and certainly with dangers of secondary complications because of the invisible barrier that they cannot surmount in order to access health services (Connolly 1992; Wright 1993; Wright et al. 1993). There is some evidence that street children are actually healthier and possibly less stunted than their contemporaries living in slums, although this may be due to the strongest and most active children being the most likely to have the courage and energy to attempt street life (Panter-Brick 2003, this issue). Moral, spiritual and intellectual health may even be improved. Moral values do not seem to be replaced by asocial attitudes; street children seem to have remarkably mainstream norms and aspirations (Swart 1990; Tyler et al. 1992). Although it is seldom reported, street children often have clear religious allegiances (Taracena and Tavera 2000, for example). Life and livelihood skills learned on the street may be more useful than rote learning in inadequate schools with ignorant or abusive teachers, and very little is ever said about the street-working children who are thereby able to support their own school attendance (Taracena and Tavera 2000; Ennew 1985). Similarly, Linda Richter and Michelle van der Walt report that results from using psychometric testing and clinical assessment with street boys in South Africa, challenges “simplistic assumptions,” by demonstrating that cognitive abilities are "contextually structured, supported and mediated." A classification of adjustment, derived from research in Cape Town, is remarkably similar to that identified by Lewis Aptekar in his classic work on street children in Cali, Colombia, and to the results of Forrest and Sandy Tyler comparing street youth in Bogotá, Colombia, and Washington (Aptekar 1988; Panter-Brick 2003, this issue; Richter and van der Walt 2003, this issue; Tyler et al. 1992).

Research

Solutions

Categorizing children as "homeless" provides a mandate for intervention strategies that repeat adult control over children, as well as reproducing class structures or other relationships of power. This usually also means adhering to ideal-type constructions such as "The Family" and ignoring entire networks of affinal and consanguineous kin (Israel and Tajfel 1972; Tajfel 1981; Hogg and Abrams 1988; Meyer 1977). The "homeless" label reflects a socially constructed need on the part of agency workers and benefactors of street children to distance themselves socially and emotionally from the children's reality, as well as reassurance that they are providing a service of fundamental value that is lacking in the lives of the children. This implies the imperative to bring children's behavior and lifestyle in line with public perceptions of social hygiene, or what is normative and appropriate in childhood. Children manipulate their own identities accordingly; they shop around different projects, and may even say that non-governmental organizations are their "clients" (Ahmed et al. 1999; Baker 1998; Hecht 1998). Children accept support services and find that they still require the skills of impression management that are vital to their survival on the streets, because they need to conform to the stereotyped notions held by care workers that street children are entirely without resources (Richter 1990).

Children's own families are not always rejected. Elena Volpi lists intervention initiatives with street children's families and communities, including local schools, as part of a World Bank defined "best practice" approach with street children. Despite the fact that new projects for street children continue to open daily, often with little thought of working with children's families or communities, many of the projects Volpi describes show a desire among project workers to strengthen the fragile family environments of street children (Volpi 2003, this issue). This also apparently results in decreased risk of peers and siblings deciding to move to the streets, in contexts where this is otherwise quite common (Hansson 2003, this issue; Panter-Brick 2003, this issue; Swart-Kruger and Chawla 2002; Thomas de Benitez 2003, this issue).

If the analysis of the problem focuses on "the street," this spatial element can be employed in the construction of solutions. The requirement is to let go of the constructed necessity to remove children from the "dirt" and danger of the street environment, and the assumed asocial chaos of their relationships, into environments of social hygiene, which all too frequently means institutional care (Rizzini and Butler 2003, this issue; Suavé 2003, this issue). Shelters and drop-in centers that rely on children's own agency and respect their time, using borrowed places within the "widest sense" of the street- such as the shadow of a tree, or the "contact points" established by the organization Butterflies in New Delhi- are possible alternative uses of space that are complementary to street children's own environmental meanings. Still more innovative approaches use the street as part of the solution. This includes the spatial notion of "outreach," with street educators and street health provision, Street Kids International's street businesses, street theatre, street law and street newspapers (Ennew 1994; O'Kane 2003, this issue; Salami and van Beers 2003, this issue; Suavé 2003, this issue).

Analysis that locates society at the root of the problem blames poverty on the one hand, and violation of children's rights on the other. Poverty reduction programs (aimed at structural and underlying causes) include street children and urban poor children in planning, but effectively continue to exclude them from services. Prevention may be better than cure, but long-term solutions are less efficient than providing social protection, so that children from vulnerable families do not see the street as the only viable environment (Thomas de Benitez 2003, this issue).

Children's rights approaches may assert the radical proposal that children have a right to choose to live on the streets (Shanahan 2003, this issue) or that children are the basis of social transformation (Cussianovich 1995). The social problem is transferred to violation of rights, and the solution is to develop rights-based programming (although there is as yet little consensus in current constructions of this, as would be expected at this stage in paradigm shift). Street Kids International (SKI) prefers to engage all street youth in program design, in the spirit of Article 12 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, including those who appear difficult to reach, since they all have the capacity to become purposeful agents in directing their own lives (Sauvé 2003, this issue). Others argue that all services for street children should be provided by street workers, on the streets, with children having the right to assess and accept or reject services offered by street workers- which indeed they do already by manipulating identities and shopping around (Shanahan 2003, this issue).

Outline of This Issue

Table 1: Matrix showing the key elements of a paradigm shift in research and work with and for street children

Children, Youth and Environments (CYE) offers an excellent platform for debating these issues. In the past it has proved difficult for academic researchers, practitioners and policy makers simultaneously to address the issue of street children. The electronic format of CYE will facilitate debate not only between these sectors but also cross-nationally. In addition, the special perspective that CYE offers, of children and youth in relation to the environment, makes it a particularly apposite forum for discussing the varied landscapes, spaces and places of street children. A growing body of research shows that children and youth identify positive opportunities and negative experiences in their local environments, which are not always perceived by adults. This insight has stimulated social anthropologists, geographers, psychologists and sociologists, among others, to study the ways in which children and youth interpret and use neighborhood place and space.

The papers in this special issue consider the implications for girls and boys who live in an environment other than the private space "homes" construed as appropriate for children. The contributors are linked by the intriguing phenomenon of children meeting most of their needs in the context of public space. Together the papers provide a perspective on street children's worldviews, including their motivations for going to the streets, the meanings and experiences of street environments, and their decisions to remain on the streets or return home. The collection consists of six new academic papers, three papers from practitioners in the field, and eleven previously published papers, providing a multilayered and multidisciplinary perspective on street children, as well as insights and information from a wide range of countries.

Rizzini and Butler trace the paradigm shift in theory and practice in the context of Brazil, while Ennew explains the changes in African constructions, and Panter-Brick describes the transformation at a global level, with particular reference to the catalytic effects of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. This is supplemented by country studies. Information about street children in Egypt, Russia and Nigeria is generally sparse; the reprints by Bibars, Fujimara and Ebigbo present information from these researchers’ grounded research in those countries. Beazley's paper and that by Butler and Rizzini focus on street children in Yogyakarta (Indonesia) and Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) respectively, providing understandings of how and why children go to the streets, what they find and how they interpret experiences there, as well as how and why they leave the streets. They show that, contrary to public perception, street children use not only street space but also a wide variety of public places, and that these influence the construction of collective identity. Rurevo and Bourdillon, for Zimbabwe, and Hansson, for South Africa, analyze the presence of girls on the streets- little understood, under-counted and often ignored.

Aptekar and Heinonen combine anthropology and psychology to focus on methodological frameworks in their paper on academic research with street children, while also providing insight into how children live and work on the streets of Addis Ababa. Heinonen's research into the family backgrounds of street children highlights differences in the ways boys and girls are reared, which are reflected in the degree of personal autonomy they achieve on the streets. van Beers notes that street children are increasingly wary of researchers who measure, weigh, interrogate and test children, often without their formal permission. He urges a genuine child-centered, participatory approach in research with street children.

Three papers in particular take a broad view towards addressing interventions. Thomas de Benitez categorizes governmental responses as threefold: reactive, protective and rights-based, each response having specific effects. Volpi's paper describes the World Bank Street Children Initiative, summarizes promising practices and approaches and examines 18 programs across the world in the light of World Bank priorities. Sauvé's field paper details the rights-based health and entrepreneurial skills programs of Street Kids International, which operate through partnerships with non-governmental organizations in various countries subsequent to their development for multinational use.

O'Kane's paper from India, Shanahan's field paper from Ghana, the field paper by Salami and van Beers from Nigeria, and the van Beers reprint provide perspectives on participatory approaches with street children. These papers are all based on ground-breaking experiences. The Butterflies project described by O'Kane was originally (and in some cases still is) considered unduly radical by some other elements in Indian civil society, because it drew children into full participatory planning and decision-making. Salami is one of the first activists since Augusto Boal to have used theatre arts in a structured way with street children and to have recorded the process (Boal 1979). Shanahan's advocacy on behalf of street children is grounded in his faith in their human potential, and acknowledgement of their rights.

To a very large extent it can be argued that recent and current paradigm shifts in the construction of, and work with, street children have their basis in the increasing awareness of children as subjects of rights, as well as active agents in their own lives, relationships and environments. Just as previous paradigms, founded on charitable, welfare-based interventions, were rooted in the construction of children as passive and lacking capacity, so the newly emerging paradigm appears to be taking the form of insistent attempts to establish "rights-based programming." The proliferation of different models is indicative of a discourse that is struggling to establish a dominant paradigm, which will, inevitably, reflect and reproduce existing power structures. The almost unseemly rush of the majority of international child welfare agencies to "empower" street (and other) children through facilitating their participation in any number of activities may be just one other example of the way the supervisory gaze of adults controls the spaces and places of all childhoods. Study of streets (in the widest sense) and the children (however constructed) who have appropriated these spaces and places provides an alternative gaze on taken- for-granted constructions of homes, families and home-based children.

Judith Ennew, Senior Research Associate in the Centre for Family Research, University of Cambridge, has been an activist and researcher in children's rights since 1979, specializing in child workers, “street children” and child sexual exploitation. She has worked in Latin America, Africa, South and South-East Asia and Eastern Europe on children's rights and child labor issues and is currently based in Bangkok.

Jill Swart-Kruger is the deputy director and senior social scientist at HIVAN, University of Natal (Durban). She is a research fellow in the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology at the University of South Africa, the South African director of the UNESCO-MOST Growing Up in Cities Project, and founder of STREET-WISE, a program for street children. She is a founding member of the Commission on Children, Youth and Childhood for the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences and serves on FAWESA, a women’s mentoring organization. Since 2000, Jill has produced social justice television documentaries. Her publications focus on children living in difficult circumstances and on participatory research with children.

References

Ahmed, S., et al. (1999). Children in Need of Special Protection Measures: A Tanzanian Study. Dar es Salaam: UNICEF.

Aptekar, Lewis (1988). Street Children of Cali. Durham: Duke University Press.

Aptekar, Lewis (1989). "Family Structure in Colombia: Its Impact on Understanding Street Children." The Journal of Ethnic Studies 17(1): 97-110.

Aptekar, Lewis (1994). "Street Children in the Developing World: A Review of Their Condition." Cross-Cultural Research 28(3): 195-224.

Aptekar, Lewis and Paola Heinonen (2003). “Methodological Implications of Contextual Diversity in Research on Street Children.” Children, Youth and Environments 13(1), Spring. Retrieved July 25 from http://colorado.edu/journals/cye.

Awad, S.S. (2002). "The Invisible Citizens Roaming the City Streets." Educational Review 54(2): 105-113.

Baker, R. (1988). "Runaway Street Children in Nepal: Social Competence Away from Home." In Hutchby, I. and J. Moran-Ellis, eds. Children and Social Competence: Arenas of Action. London: Falmer Press, 46-63.

Beazley, Harriot (2003). “The Construction and Protection of Individual and Collective Identities by Street Children and Youth in Indonesia.” Children, Youth and Environments 13(1), Spring. Retrieved July 25 from http://colorado.edu/journals/cye.

Bibars, I. (2003). “Street Children in Egypt: From the Home to the Street to Inappropriate Institutions.” Children, Youth and Environments 13(1), Spring. Retrieved July 25 from http://colorado.edu/journals/cye.

Boal, A. (1979). The Theatre of the Oppressed. New York: Urizen Books.

Boyden, Jo (1990). "Childhood and the Policy Makers." In James, A. and A. Prout, eds. Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood. Brighton: Falmer Press.

Boyden, Jo and Judith Ennew (1997). Children in Focus: A Manual for Participatory Research with Children. Stockholm: Radda Barnen.

Bray, R. (2003). Predicting the Social Consequences of Orphanhood in South Africa (CSSR Working Paper No. 29). Cape Town: University of Cape Town, Centre for Social Science Research.

Butler, Udi and Irene Rizzini (2003). “Young People Living and Working on the Streets of Brazil: Revisiting the Literature.” Children, Youth and Environments 13(1), Spring. Retrieved July 25 from http://colorado.edu/journals/cye.

Clarke, L. (2002). "AIDS Legacy- Orphan Gangs Roam Inner Cities." The Saturday Independent, May 10.

Connolly, M. (1992). The Health of Street Children and Youth. New York: UNICEF (unpublished).

Connolly, M. and Judith Ennew (1996). "Introduction: Children out of Place." Childhood 3(2): 131-146.

Creuziger, C.G.K. (1997). "Russia's Unwanted Children: A Cultural Anthropological Study of Marginalised Children in Moscow and St. Petersburg." Childhood 4(3): 343-358.

Cussianovich, A. (1995). "Working Children and Adolescents: Culture, Image and Theory." NATS Working Children and Adolescents International Review February: 27-32.

Daniel, M. (2003). Children without Parents in Botswana: The Safety Net and Beyond. Scientific Meeting on Empirical Evidence for the Demographic and Socio-Economic Impact of AIDS, University of Natal.

Douglas, M. (1996). Purity and Danger. London: Routledge.

Ebigbo, P.O. (2003). “Street Children the Core of Child Abuse and Neglect in Nigeria.” Children, Youth and Environments 13(1), Spring. Retrieved July 25 from http://colorado.edu/journals/cye.

Ennew, Judith (1985). Juvenile Street Workers in Lima: The Anti-Slavery Society and ODA (unpublished).

Ennew, Judith (1986). "Children of the Street." New Internationalist 164(October): 10-11.

Ennew, Judith (1994). Street and Working Children: A Guide to Planning (Development Manual 4). London: Save the Children.

Ennew, Judith (2000). "Why the Convention Is not about Street Children." In Fottrell, D., ed. Revisiting Children's Rights: Ten Years of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. The Hague: Kluwer Law International, 169-182.

Ennew, Judith (2003). “Difficult Circumstances: Some Reflections on ‘Street Children’ in Africa.” Children, Youth and Environments 13(1), Spring. Retrieved July 25 from http://colorado.edu/journals/cye.

Espinola, B., et al. (1988). In the Streets: Working Street Children in Asunción. Bogotá, Colombia: UNICEF.

Forsyth, B., et al. (1996). "The Psychological Effects of Parental Human Immunodeficiency Virus Infection on Uninfected Children." Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine 150: 1015- 1020.

Foucault, Michel (1979). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage.

Foucault, Michel (1980). Power/ Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977. Brighton, Sussex: Harvester Press.

Fujimura, Clementine (2003). “Adult Stigmatization and the Hidden Power of Homeless Children in Russia.” Children, Youth and Environments 13(1), Spring. Retrieved July 25 from http://colorado.edu/journals/cye.

Giddens, A. (1984). The Construction of Society: Outline of a Theory of Structuration. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

Glauser, B. (1990). "Street Children: Deconstructing a Construct." In James, A. and A. Prout, eds. Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood: Contemporary Issues in the Sociological Study of Childhood. London: Falmer Press, 138-156.

Hansson, Desiree (2003). “’Strolling’ as a Gendered Experience: A Feminist Analysis of Young Females in Cape Town.” Children, Youth and Environments 13(1), Spring. Retrieved July 25 from http://colorado.edu/journals/cye.

Hecht, T. (1998). At Home in the Street: Street Children in Northeast Brazil. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Hogg, M.A. and D. Abrams (1988). Social Identifications: A Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations and Group Processes. London: Routledge.

Holland, P. (1992). What Is a Child? London: Virago.

International Labour Organisation (ILO) (2002). A Future without Child Labour. Geneva: International Labour Organisation.

Invernizzi, A. (2001). La Vie Quotidienne des Enfants Travailleurs: Strategies de Survie et Socialization dans les Rues de Lima. Paris and Budapest: Turinn, L'Harmattan.

Kruger, Jill M. and Linda M. Richter (2003). “South African Street Children at Risk for AIDS?” Children, Youth and Environments 13(1), Spring. Retrieved July 25 from http://colorado.edu/journals/cye.

La Fontaine, J. (1990). The Sexual Abuse of Children. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Levi-Strauss, C. (1949). Les Structures Elementaires de la Parenté. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Liebow, E. (1967). Tally's Corner: A Study of Negro Street Corner Men. New York: Little, Brown and Co.

Lucchini, R. (1996a). "The Street and Its Image." Childhood 3(2): 235-246.

Lucchini, R. (1996b). "Theory, Method and Triangulation in the Study of Street Children." Childhood 3(2): 167-170.

Lucchini, R. (1996c). Sociologie se la Sirvie: L'enfant dans le Rue. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Lusk, M. (1992). "Street Children of Rio De Janeiro." International Social Work 35: 293-305.

Meyer, P. (1977). L'enfant et la Raison D'état. Paris: Éditions de Seuil.

Nieuwenhuys, O. (2001). "By the Sweat of Their Brow? 'Street Children,' NGOs, and Children's Rights in Addis Ababa." Africa 71(4): 539-557.

Patel, A. (1983). An Overview of Street Children in India. New York: Covenant House.

O’Kane, Claire (2003). “Street and Working Children’s Participation in Programming for Their Rights.” Children, Youth and Environments 13(1), Spring. Retrieved July 25 from http://colorado.edu/journals/cye.

Panter-Brick, Catherine (2003). “Street Children, Human Rights, and Public Health: A Critique and Future Directions.” Children, Youth and Environments 13(1), Spring. Retrieved July 25 from http://colorado.edu/journals/cye.

Rajani, R. and M. Kudrati (1994). Street Children of Mwanza: A Situational Analysis. Dar es Salaam: UNICEF-Tanzania and Kuleana.

Richter, L. (1990). "An Analysis of Child Care Workers’ Descriptions of Street Children." In Biderman-Pam, M. and B. Gannon, eds. Competent Care, Competent Kids. Cape Town: National Association of Child Care Workers, 100-112.

Richter, Linda M. and Michelle van der Walt (2003). “The Psychological Assessment of South African Street Children.” Children, Youth and Environments 13(1), Spring. Retrieved July 25 from http://colorado.edu/journals/cye.

Rizzini, Irene (1996). "Street Children: An Excluded Generation in South America." Childhood 3(1): 215-234.

Rizzini, Irene and Udi Butler (2003). “Life Trajectories of Children and Adolescents Living on the Streets of Rio de Janeiro.” Children, Youth and Environments 13(1), Spring. Retrieved July 25 from http://colorado.edu/journals/cye.

Rosenberg, F. and L.F. Andrade (1999). "Ruthless Rhetoric: Child and Youth Prostitution in Brazil." Childhood 6(1): 113-132.

Regional Working Group on Child Labour (RWG-CL) (2003). Handbook for Action-Oriented Research on the Worst Forms of Child Labour Including Trafficking in Children. Bangkok: Regional Working Group on Child Labour.

Rurevo, Rumbidzai and Michael Bourdillon (2003). “Girls: The Less Visible Street Children of Zimbabwe.” Children, Youth and Environments 13(1), Spring. Retrieved July 25 from http://colorado.edu/journals/cye.

Salami, Irene and Henk van Beers (2003). “Nigerian ‘Shade Tree Theater’ with Street Children.” Children, Youth and Environments 13(1), Spring. Retrieved July 25 from http://colorado.edu/journals/cye.

Sauvé, Stephanie (2003). “Changing Paradigms for Working with Street Youth: The Experience of Street Kids International.” Children, Youth and Environments 13(1), Spring. Retrieved July 25 from http://colorado.edu/journals/cye.

Shanahan, Patrick (2003). “Streets versus Elites: Tensions, Trade-Offs, and Treaties with Street Children in Accra, Ghana.” Children, Youth and Environments 13(1), Spring. Retrieved July 25 from http://colorado.edu/journals/cye.

Stedman-Jones, G. (1971). Outcast London: A Study in the Relationship between Classes in Victorian Society. London, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.

Stephens, S. (1995). "Introduction." In Stephens, S., ed. Children and the Politics of Culture. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Stephenson, S. (2002). Child Labour in the Russian Federation. Geneva: International Labour Organisation.

Swart, Jill (1988). An Anthropological Study of Street Children in Hillbrow, Johannesburg with Special Reference to Their Moral Values. MA Dissertation. Department of Anthropology. University of South Africa, Pretoria.

Swart, Jill (1990). Malunde- the Street Children of Hillbrow. Johannesburg: University of the Witwatersrand Press.

Swart-Kruger, Jill (1997). "Situated Learning: 'Tiekie-Dice' among Street Children in South Africa." Journal of Psychology in Africa 1: 1-11.

Swart-Kruger, Jill and Louise Chawla (2002). "Children Show the Way: Participatory Programs for Children of South African Streets and Squatter Camps." In Tienda, M. and J. Wilson, eds. Youth in Cities: A Cross-National Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Tajfel, H. (1981). Human Groups and Social Categories: Studies in Social Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Taracena, E. and M-L. Tavera (2000). "Stigmatization Versus Identity: Street Workers in Mexico." In Schlemmer, B., ed. The Exploited Child. London: Zed Books Ltd., 93-105.

Thomas de Benitez, Sarah (2003). “Reactive, Protective, and Rights-Based Approaches in Work with Homeless Street Youth.” Children, Youth and Environments 13(1), Spring. Retrieved July 25 from http://colorado.edu/journals/cye.

Tyler, F.B., et al. (1992). "Huckleberry Finn and Street Youth Everywhere." In Albee, G.W. and T.V. Cook Monsey, eds. Improving Children's Lives: Global Perspectives on Prevention. London: Sage, 200-212.

van Beers, Henk (1994). In Search of the Girl: A Critical Review of the Literature on Girlhood in the South (InDRA Occasional Paper No. 2). Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam.

van Beers, Henk (2002). Children's Participation: Experiences in Capacity Building and Training. Stockholm: Save the Children Sweden and Henk van Beers.

van Beers, Henk (2003). “A Plea for a Child-Centred Approach in Research with Street Children.” Children, Youth and Environments 13(1), Spring. Retrieved July 25 from http://colorado.edu/journals/cye.

Volpi, Elena (2003). “Street Children: Promising Practices and Approaches.” Children, Youth and Environments 13(1), Spring. Retrieved July 25 from http://colorado.edu/journals/cye.

Whyte, W.F. (1943). Street Corner Society: The Social Structure of an Italian Slum. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Wright, J.D. (1993). "Homeless Children: Two Years." American Journal of Diseases of Children 147(May): 518-519.

Wright, J.D., D. Kaminsky and M. Wittig (1993). "Health and Social Conditions of Street Children in Honduras." American Journal of Diseases of Children 147(March): 279-283.

Young, L. and H. Barrett (2001). "Issues of Access and Identity: Adapting Research Methods with Kampala Street Children." Childhood 8(3): 383-395.