[Reader-list] [Forward: on the Vijaywada Railway Station by Meera Pillai

[Vivek Narayanan]

As part of my proposed research with street children
in south India’s Vijayawada railway station, I began a
litt search.  Apropos the ongoing discussion about
copyrighting and access to resources on the web on the
readers’ list, it was interesting to see how many new
journals were now (un)available, with articles that
you could buy for over USD 34, if you were not lucky
enough to be affiliated to an institution that
subscribed to it.

Another interesting thing that I learned was that
there is a whole discipline (fairly new) today called
“Children’s Geographies” with its own conferences,
journals, university courses and so on.  This gave me
a few leads, in terms of other scholars I could write
to and so on, and also, an interesting methodological
tool.  A group of children mapped their neighbourhood
by its smells.  That would be an interesting thing to
do in an Indian railway station, I thought!  Comments
and methodological suggestions are welcome, especially
considering that the children are likely to have
developed a certain degree of imperviousness to the
smell, given that they live there.

I’m sharing some information from the litt search on
street children.  It’s written up very informally,
without citations and so on, I can supply you with the
sources if you wish.

Street children have been defined in various ways at
various fora, and distinctions are usually drawn
between children who live on the street with no
contact with their families, and others who spend most
of their time on the street but maintain regular
contact with their families.  However, the most common
elements of these varied definitions see street
children as perceiving the street as their most common
shelter and means of existence, and as living without
the consistent supervision or guidance of responsible
adults.  West (2003) suggests that the variety in the
definitions may have less to do with the children or
the situations and more to do with the imperatives
guiding the individuals and organizations attempting
to define the term: “At the root of the definitional
problem is a desire to make an intervention, the aim
of which may vary on the part of organizations,
projects or individuals, from ‘saving’ children, to
realizing children’s rights, or to a
more punitive attempt to put children back ‘in place.’

Terms used to refer to street children varied from one
country to another, from the bland “minors at risk”
preferred in Italy, to the distinction made by
Cameroon between “fighters”, “old fighters”,
“mosquitoes” and “chickens”, largely based on a
perception of their familiarity with criminal
behaviour.  While the “fighters” and “old fighters”
had been sent to jail once or many times respectively,
the “mosquitoes”, below the age of 14, had attracted
the attention of the law for anti-social behaviour but
never actually gone to jail, while the “chickens” were
very young children who were on the street because
they had been abandoned, or had got lost.  Ghanaian
terminology made a difference between “runaways”,
children who rejected their homes and families and
sought to escape from them, and “throwaways,” children
who had been abandoned by their parents or families. 
Across the globe, however, perceptions seem to broadly
fall in three categories (West, 2003).  Street
children are seen as victims, or as small criminals,
or often, not “seen” at all.

The phenomenon exists across the globe, with an
estimated 7000 young people on the streets even in a
country with fairly good social welfare systems like
the Netherlands, and several hundred thousand in
countries like India.  In some totalitarian states,
the problem tends to be hidden if there is a need for
the ruling government to project that social problems
have “been solved.” Thus, Teclici noted that in
Romania, children who ran away from their homes or
institutional settings were picked up by the police
and sent back.  That this did not work as a solution
was revealed in the records which show children as
“running away” again and again; in one instance,
records showed that a child had returned to the
streets over a hundred times.  Post 1991, however, in
Romania, both the issue, as well as attempts to look
for solutions, have come out into the open.  

There are visibly fewer street girls than street boys.
 Scholars have argued that this is because girls tend
to be quickly whisked off the streets by networks
promoting commercial sex work.  

Scholars emphasize the importance of seeing the
population of street children as being dynamic, not
static, and not homogenous.  Children grow up and
become adults, or get into more settled lives, through
child care institutions or employment, and are
replaced by others.

Street children typically find a variety of places to
stay in addition to streets and footpaths.  These
include bus depots, railway stations, boats,
marketplaces and the spaces under railway bridges and
flyovers.

In India, one study in Mumbai found that more street
girls had had access to formal education, and more of
it at that, when compared to street boys.  Exploring
the kind of careers that street children found
attractive revealed that street girls were most
attracted towards human service professions like
medicine, mursing, and teaching; or 
tailoring. Street boys tended to focus on skilled work
like driving, or technical work like that of
automobile mechanics or electricians. 

Most of the children mentioned studying and working
hard as important components to achieving career
aspirations, indicating that success was seen as a
concomitant of individual effort, and the role of
systemic factors was not taken into account.  However,
a significant 33.3% of street boys said they had no
idea about how to achieve their aspirations.  An
interesting gender difference was that a significant
number of street girls said they would seek advice or
assistance from individuals or institutions to help
them achieve their career goals.  Street boys on the
other hand said that they would have to work and earn
as a pre-condition to studying or training to achieve
their career goals.

There is an increasing recognition that children are
and/or should be the protagonists of their lives, and
the international instruments and conventions which
focus on children’s right to participate formally
acknowledge this.  This is especially true in the case
of street children, who more often than not, have no
choice except to take responsibility for their lives. 
This is borne out by the research.

Stephenson, from her study of street children in
Moscow, concluded that street children were not merely
“reacting” to their circumstances, but took on active
roles, sought and gained social capital and mobility,
and optimized the use of resources that they could
access.  She argues against the viewing of street
children as a homogeneous, dispossessed mass.

There is a hierarchy prevailing in the streets. In the
Russian urban context, those on the lowest tiers were
the new runaways, who had not yet found a support
structure or aligned themselves with an established
social group on the streets, or children of adults
living on the street. Young people on the street
sought legitimicacy and security by aligning
themselves with one of two kinds of social groups:
:Arbats or local street gangs.  Arbats differed from
local street gangs by their ban on stealing, begging
and commercial sex, and their modeling of a structure
that resembled familial units and provided “emotional
and material support.”  Local street gangs engaged in
criminal activity, and individual children sought to
establish a ‘good reputation’ by their contributions
in the hope of obtaining a passport to adult criminal
gangs. In the post-communist society, organized crime
is seen as offering opportunities for employment, and
career advancement.

Depending on their levels of social skills, children
are able to use networks and resources on the street
to greater or lesser degree, not merely as a means of
survival, but to achieve social mobility.

Beazley (2003) in a study of Indonesia’s street
children found that they use many ways to secure
spaces, physical and social, for themselves.  At the
most obvious level, they take over particular physical
localities.  At a more symbolic level, they subscribe
to certain sub-cultures (like the Tikyan sub-culture),
and, as groups, reject the mainstream’s rejection of
them by refusing to wear conventional clothing and
adopting unconventional body decoration and sexual
practices. In Cambodia, younger street children are
controlled, and often exploited by “bong lorn” (big
brother) gangs.

Health is a major issue for all people in poverty, and
more so for street children.  In addition to the
ailments and diseases associated with poverty,
malnutrition, poor sanitation, inadequate shelter and
lack of/inadequate access to preventive health and
healthcare resources, in recent times, research has
shown that this is a group with particular
vulnerability to HIV/AIDS.  A study in Bangalore
showed that most street children reported early sexual
initiation, high frequency of sexual contact and
multiple partners.  Sex was used most frequently to
alleviate bejaar(anxiety/stress) but also as a means
of recreation or exchange for material goods or drugs
or protection.  For street boys, the majority of
sexual contacts were homosexual, even though they
placed a higher value on heterosexual intercourse.