Abstract
A plurality of factors (economic, social, familial, identitary, psychological and spatial) bring the child to the streets. The role of these factors and their interaction need to be understood through the child’s subjectivity and the way he/she and other actors involved give meaning to them, which also depends on the cultural context and the associated perception of childhood. Identifying transitions in the biography of CSS requires to look at both their discursive consciousness (knowledge) and practical consciousness (know-how). The diversity of the modes of leaving home underlines the gradual process whereby the child progressively breaks-up taboos and acquires new competencies and knowledge over time. There is a continuum going from brutal and immediate expulsion of the child to a pure and nurtured choice to leave home. Going to the streets includes several stages and thresholds, whose number and type depend on the personality, identity, biography of the child and changing perceptions of the street’s unpredictability. Critical identity changes may bring to points of “no-return”.
This chapter is updated from Lucchini, R. (1997). Between runaway and eviction : the child leaving for the street. (Working Paper, Institut des Sciences Economiques et Sociales, Université de Fribourg).
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Notes
- 1.
One of my interlocutors told me that in the dynamics of leaving home, familial culture is more important than economic situation. The image of man and woman, the child’s place in relation to the parental couple, and the quality of affective links are the elements which are most influential to the child’s attitude toward leaving home for the street.
- 2.
These studies focus above all on Europe and the United States. There is as yet no reason to claim that this diversity of reactions toward violence is not to be found elsewhere.
- 3.
Translation by the author.
- 4.
Varela is not the inventor of the concept of micro-world, as used to stress that in daily life nothing is strictly determined. Anselm Strauss uses the concept in reference to the segmentation of social worlds in which individuals evolve. By using this concept, Strauss also wants to raise attention on the extreme fluidity of the set of social worlds (or fields of activities) which constitutes a society (Strauss 1992, pp. 273–274). Others, like Abraham Moles, stress the importance of micro-actions, of micro-events associated to daily routines. This means that when one considers the detail of the elements in the situation where an individual is placed, “behavior in fact results from a range of micro-decisions, largely located under the threshold of the conceived, but perfectly explainable by the observer” (Moles 1976, pp. 17–18).
- 5.
Not all of the children have the necessary competencies to go to the street and to stay there. However, this does not mean that the child who does not possess the required competencies leaves the street sooner that the one who successfully adapts to it. In fact, the social control exerted by the group and the child’s concern for their reputation often delay their exit from the street.
- 6.
This is not the case if some other children in the family have already left for the street. These cases are relatively frequent, and the child has not anymore the feeling of breaking a taboo, because they are not the first one to leave home.
- 7.
The birth of the feeling of solicitude finds its roots in early childhood, even if it develops or on the contrary diminishes in later experiences. Winnicott tells us also that in order for this feeling to be expressed and to be strengthened, the small child must “feel that the mother or the maternal substitute is a total person”. Yet, this requires, among other things, not only the material presence of the mother, but also attentive listening on her part. However, the personal history of children is often characterised by the absence or the extreme weakness of such a readiness to listen to the child. By analysing the child’s familial relationships, we will see that they are characterised by a certain coolness and the lack of appreciation of the child by responsible adults and especially by the mother. Despite individual histories marked by a relative absence of the mother, we have observed the presence of solicitude with most of the children. This implies that despite appearances, the child has a reference adult at home. This reference is often strongly idealized by the child. This explains why we find with many children the presence of a claim for autonomy and at the same time a feeling of guilt toward the reference adult, in most cases the mother.
- 8.
Girls do not react to breaks as boys do. In fact, under equal conditions, girls leave home less quickly that boys. We can then speak of a differential access to the street for girls. This is not applicable to girls who work in the street’s informal sector and who are accompanied by an adult – mother, father, sister, brother. One also finds them in groups of children coming from the same neighborhood or linked by parental ties. These children come back home on a daily basis. See: Riccardo Lucchini, op. cit., 1995. We will also see that for the girl the relationship with the mother represents a stake which is as concerned with identity as it is affective. For the boy, the stake is above all affective, even if the dimension of identity is not absent. This is one of the reasons why the girl does not go directly in the street, but ‘wants to show’ to her mother that she is also able to be a woman. She therefore leaves home for some time in order to form a couple with an older boy or a man. These couples are unstable and it is only after they break up that certain girls will go to the street or return home.
- 9.
See especially: Latin American Perspectives, Women in Latin America, Issue 85, Vol. 22, No. 2, 1995; and Latin American Perspectives, Women in Latin America 2, Issue 88, Vol. 23, No. 1, 1996.
- 10.
- 11.
All this occurs without any explicit plan and most of the time remains unconscious. The part of identitary provocation in the dynamics of a child leaving home must not be underestimated. We have observed that this component of leaving home is weakly influenced by the economic situation of the family. It concerns families living in total destitution as well as families whose income allow the purchase of durable commodity goods: TVs, video players, cookers, or washing machines, for instance.
- 12.
Alda also speaks of another rape attempt by one of her uncles whose care she was in. Rape or attempt of rape is the violence most often mentioned by the girls who talk about their leaving home.
- 13.
Alda’s account has been confirmed by one of her aunts and by her grandmother.
- 14.
The Spanish expression is heavier. Alda says: “Yo fui la unica de el”.
- 15.
The face is the image the person has of themselves and that they wants to be recognised by others. With the child, leaving home for the street is an act of protest against the parental non-recognition of this ideal image they has of themselves.
- 16.
One must not forget that we talk of single parent families, or families in which the father is present only during the night hours because his job keeps him away from home during the day. The mothers of CSS often express their helplessness in the process that takes their boy away from home. They say that the attraction of the street and of gangs is stronger than any of their attempts to forbid this behavior. Moreover, these mothers often work all day long and cannot take all of their children to their workplaces.
- 17.
Many CSS describe this maternal behavior. Even if they hide in order not to have to go back home, they want to stress their mother’s affection for them. To the child, this behavior from their mother is valorizing. With certain children, it brings with a feeling of guilt that they express by justifying their strategy of evasion.
- 18.
In this respect, the case of Axel is interesting. He is eighteen years old and has been mistreated by his mother since he was small. The woman in whose care he is entrusted for a significant even forces him to eat his own excrement. Despite of this, Axel does not stay in the street, and comes back home quite quickly. He is completely subjected to a sadistic mother who has even risked killing him by practicing witchcraft on him. This youth does not stay in the street, because his subjection to his mother is too strong. Besides, he does not have the minimal competences – instrumental, symbolic, social, motivational – to stay on the street. The case of Axel is a limit case, because the mistreatments that he has suffered for so long have put him in a situation of complete dependency. It is therefore no longer possible to speak of a biographical break.
- 19.
Survival is characterized by, among other things, a devaluation of the statuses of father and of husband, and of the identities attaches to them. Male violence within the family is linked to a conflict of identity, and to the stress resulting from it. The woman takes on most of the family’s economic and educational responsibilities. This de facto independence is not recognized in a society in which the man is still perceived as the guarantor of family honor. A growing responsibilization of the woman and a growing marginalization of the man in familial concerns constitute conditions favoring male violence. The conflict between the traditional image of man and his real situation in survival is inevitable. This shakes the man’s self-esteem and entails violence. This is related to the man’s statutory aspirations and the absence of a means to concretize them. Furthermore, the woman takes herself to be responsible for this situation and is subject to male violence. There are many women who work seven days a week on the markets, and for whom the workplace and the relationships they can constitute there are the most important positive references they have.
- 20.
One must recall that only a minority of children who leave their family are then found among CSS.
- 21.
The housing conditions of the slums are not homogeneous. The circumstances of their beginnings, their growth, and the struggle of their inhabitants to obtain the legalization of their occupation of the land have led to quite diverse urban forms. Nor is the socio-economic status of the slum population homogeneous. There are important differences among the inhabitants, and this is especially true for the oldest neighborhoods.
- 22.
It seems that this kind of accusation is not rare, as we have noticed it in several accounts made by mothers of CSS.
- 23.
Amigo was ten years old when he seriously ran away from home for the first time, but since he was four years old he had often left home for the streets of the neighborhood. He is a child who alternates between periods in institutions and periods at home. The street is an intermediary space between these two. While his school results are fairly good, he often drops out. The child’s biological mother put him in the care with a woman who had no parental ties with him when he was born. The father is unknown. His adoptive mother left her partner and the man who had replaced him died in a road accident when Amigo was thirteen years old. He has a brother who is four years old, from his adoptive mother and his second stepfather. The adoptive mother is very affectionate with the child, but she is likely to be depressed.
- 24.
“Yo creo que tambien por eso salio mala”.
- 25.
Placement in care and circulation of children is a common practice which should not be assimilated to abandonment. Some of these practices are close to the logic of gift and counter-gift (don et contre-don). Some others are free and are part of a logic of mutual aid. Care placements may be definitive, temporary or unspecified in time. For a detailed analysis (see Fonseca 1985, 1991).
- 26.
“Dios lo acompañe [...] porque yo ya no puedo estar haciendo coraje. Yo ya estoi acabada para coraje. Yo no soporto”.
- 27.
Regarding this, one must recall that CSS generally have more money than if they had regular jobs. They can also use it as they please. However, it is not really the average income the child has that pleases them, but rather the possibility of occasionally obtaining significant amounts of money, such as through thefts. In order to understand the relationship CSS have to money, one should not simply consider the amounts they have at their disposal. One must also know through what means they have obtained this money, and what they intend to do with it. In fact, the modes of acquisition are linked to the child’s competencies, and thus to their reputation in the eyes of their peers.
- 28.
See Riccardo Lucchini, op. cit., 1996.
- 29.
It is possible to differentiate between two types of attitude in the mother when their child ‘visit- returns’. The first one contains no moral blackmail. In this case, the mother limits herself to explaining the child how anxious she is about their life on the street. She raises their attention to their responsibilities rather than on their guilt. The second type concerns the mother who makes her child feel guilty by taking them to be responsible for the moral suffering imposed on her.
- 30.
There are moments in the life of a group of CSS characterized by the beginning of a new cycle of contacts with the family. Such a cycle is characterized by the temporary return home of several children belonging to the same network. Generally, the cycle begins when a child who has a certain prestige among his peers takes the initiative of going back home, or when a group of children in the same network leave the street together. A number of factors can lead to such returns: (a) the presence of a charismatic mediator between the children and their families; (b) the existence of an institutional initiative from an assistance programme; (c) a crisis of the leadership in the group; (d) an important change in the survival ecology, such as police repression or a change of the space the children occupy; (e) the effect of imitation.
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Lucchini, R. (2020). Leaving for the Street. 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_4
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