Abstract
Departing from the usual explanation in terms of poverty and family problems, the concept «children in street situations » casts light on the social construction and the historical stigmatization of «street children». This “concept in search of an object” introduces to a series of «processual objects», shifting focus from individuals to an «object» – a social process – experienced by them. Closer to symbolic interactionism and pragmatism, the approach goes beyond phenomenological perspective by considering that the object is neither the child as a subject of rights nor the society, but rather the social process that links them together. This allows to highlight the agency of CSS as actors that are simultaneously exposed to situations they are co-constructing with diverse survival strategies. The ‘objects’ that are thus constructed by social actors are considered the result of an evolving structure of pertinences.
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Research is ongoing at the time of writing, under the supervision of Daniel Stoecklin. It touches upon the participatory capability of children in street situations in Brasil and China (Research under SNFS Grant 10001A_179098/1).
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Stoecklin, D., Lucchini, R. (2020). Introduction. In: Children in Street Situations. Children’s Well-Being: Indicators and Research, vol 21. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19040-8_1
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