Mexico’s Street Children

This chapter examines the problem of street children in Mexico from a clinical sociology point of view. In Mexico, we have developed a socioclinical perspective based on French clinical sociology and psychology, adapting it to the reality of the complex social phenomena of our country with its strong economic and social contradictions. We have carried out this work for the last fifteen years, at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). Our faculty’s curriculum, from the beginning, has involved the linking of teaching, research, and service via clinics and community interventions. The work with socially excluded populations that is carried out in this program involves simultaneous research and intervention. It is in this context that the Secretariat of Public Education called upon us, as a team of university researchers with experience in intervention involving street children, to submit an educational model that takes into account the cultural characteristics and way of life of these young people (Taracena and Albarrán, 2006).

Clinical sociology concerns itself with examining complex social problems; it analyzes the subjective dimension in both its individual and collective aspects. On the subjective level, the categories suggested by Bourdieu (1984) have proved very useful to us. In particular, those referring to symbolic, cultural, and economic capital permit us to locate the position of a person or group of people.