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

[schatte2 at ncsu.edu]

Hi Meera,

Since you came across children's geographies, there is one more
web-journal that you should check out--Journal of Children, Youth and
Environment. Their articles are free and they are very high quality
peer-reviewed ones. CYE is also digitizing all the back issues of the
seminal (but discontinued) journal called "Children's Environments".

My own research on children's environments overlaps considerably with
issues commonly tackled in geographies of childhood and youth. One
intersting point to note  is that there is a difference between
"children's geographies" and "geography of children". According to Aitken
(1994) children's geographies involves "children's exploration of self in
adult controlled environments" while the geography of children has to do
with "the spatial
variables and factors which affect the well-being of children".

Will be interested in hearing more from you.

Sudeshna


> 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.
>
>
>
>
>
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