Abstract
One of the major difficulties in constructing a typology children in street situations (CSS), even a partial one, stems from the absence of a precise definition of CSS as they form a heterogeneous category. To use criteria such as family contact or street presence can be misleading. On the other hand, the notion of ‘career’ developed by the sociology of deviance proves useful as the factors affecting the child’s mobility between « fields » (family, assistance programme, school, street) are subjectively interpreted. A ‘definition’, in this case, shows to be less operational, and it is better to work with a model in order to construct a typology of CSS. The model discussed here is the « Child-Street System », which is composed of nine interactive dimensions with connections depending on the meanings given by the child to events. The identification of continuities and ruptures is indispensable in order to reconstruct and understand the biography of the child who leaves home.
This chapter is adapted from Lucchini, R. (2007). « Street children »: Deconstruction of a category. In Irene Rizzini, Udi Mandel Butler and Daniel Stoecklin (Eds.): Life on the streets. Children and Adolescents on the Streets: Inevitable Trajectories? (pp. 49–75) Sion: International institute for the rights of the child. Reprinted with courtesy of International institute for the rights of the child.
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Notes
- 1.
The precariousness of the material existence of the poorest means that they seek out varied support outside of the domestic sphere. This is how the institution of compadres (godfathers) who assist the children and young adults in their various steps. It is often the children themselves who takes the initiative to look for a compadre.
- 2.
There are also children who, more and more, live in the street with their family. Some are second and even third generation. Are they street children? Such cases illustrate perfectly the difficulties encountered by the application of the two-dimensional schema.
- 3.
The number of dimensions in the Child-Street System has evolved along empirical findings.
- 4.
For the concept of biographical rupture, see: Francisco J. Varela, Quel savoir pour l’éthique. Action, sagesse et cognition, La Découverte, Paris, 1996, pp. 25–38; Norman K. Denzin., Interpretive Interactionism, Sage, London, 1990, pp. 18 ss.; Abraham Moles, Micropsychologie et vie quotidienne, Denoël/Gonthier, Paris, 1976, pp. 17 ss.; Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1991, pp. 35–70.
- 5.
Actually, the number of families in which various members of the group were or are runaways is very low. This is also the case in the situation of the children in the street that we studied in Rio de Janeiro.
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Lucchini, R. (2020). Children in Street Situations: A Complex Reality. 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_3
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