Shame, Exclusion, and the Violence of Discourse
Street children’s interactions with everyday violence extend well beyond physical violence and conflict to encompass various forms of exclusion and stigmatization. Shame is a constant theme in reports of street children’s lives, and many people assume that street children are marginalized from mainstream society and subject to abuse.
What has also not received much attention is the ways in which mainstream discourses of universal childhoods and assumptions that children need to be rescued may actually exacerbate young people’s feelings of marginalization. Children are increasingly exposed to discourses of global childhood as a time for play and school. However, when their daily lives do not meet this reality, they may feel particularly excluded. In Tanzania, Evans (2006) found that street children had internalized beliefs that they were “out of place.” In Lima, Peru, children had similarly internalized beliefs that they should not be working in the streets (Aufseeser 2012). In such regards, although the material conditions of children’s lives have not changed, they perceived them in a much more negative light because of the messages they are receiving about how childhood ought to be. Feelings of marginalization may then be linked to other types of violence. For example, Jones et al. (2007) found that street youth who had contemplated suicide also mentioned feeling abandoned, not having work, or having been affected by the death of friends. In other situations, children and young people act out, engaging in various forms of violence, as a result of their exclusion.Discourses are not harmless. The way in which childhood and street children are conceptualized and assumptions about the street and behaviors of children in the street shape children’s own actions, as well as the way others respond to them, in ways that have material consequences for their exposure to everyday violence.
Even well-intentioned efforts to raise funding or awareness can contribute to their exclusion. For example, charities frequently present children in a decontextualized way, which obscures the real issues in their lives and ironically may hinder more effectively addressing the challenges they face (Ruddick 2003). Efforts to “rehabilitate” children based on inaccurate assumptions about their lives can also invalidate the positive things that they have achieved and may actually be more painful for them than the forms of physical violence. Adolescent sex workers in Ho-Chi Minh reported that even though they faced multiple forms of abuse on the streets and through their work, it was the “disrespect for their dignity” that hurt the most (Rubenson et al. 2005, p. 391). Rehabilitation programs cost them financially and did not improve their situations.Categorizing children as street children without allowing them the ability to represent themselves and their experiences in and of itself constitutes a form of violence. The label of “street child” denies young people agency, generalizing their experiences and linking them with both victimization and delinquency (PanterBrick 2002). There have also been some important studies that emphasize the role that research methodologies themselves can play in either contributing to or countering forms of everyday violence against street children. Ritterbusch (2013) argues that labeling of “street girls” can itself be a form of exclusion. Instead, she examines how Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) can be a form of empowerment in which youth negotiate and resist the relationships of power in their lives. YPAR made the girls more visible and provided them with a space from which to reclaim the city and fight for safer spaces. More generally, including children in the design and evaluation of services intended for them is important for creating more effective policies to address young people's needs (Thomas de Benitez 2007).
5.1 Programs and Policies for Street Children: Reducing or Exacerbating Violence?
There have been a wide range of policy and programming efforts to address the violence and tensions in street children's lives.
While some programming does connect children to much needed resources and helps them develop relationships with supportive adults, too often, programming is based on narrow understandings of childhood and limited views of the types and locations of violence in street children's lives (Thomas de Benitez 2007). Despite significant gains made in recognizing children as active agents, policy makers and program directors often still design interventions based on narrow assumptions of streets as dangerous places for children. This can ironically expose them to more abuse.When children are excluded from participation in various programming or face rejection and abuse at the hands of those who are supposed to be helping them, they may distance themselves from other outreach or social workers (Ali 2014), limiting them from getting any assistance that would potentially be useful and arguably further marginalizing them. Street children may view educators and social workers as threats if they are trying to force children into programs that do not meet their needs. This is especially the case with closed programs, which are programs that do not give children the freedom to come and go based on their own initiative (Thomas de Benitez 2003). Such programs are themselves often sites of physical abuse. Young people report preferring the “freedom” of the streets to the abuse and strict regulations that they find in some children's homes (Conticini and Hulme 2007). In Bangladesh, Conticini and Hulme (2007) found that violence occurred as frequently in government institutions as it did on the street, challenging views that children are better off in institutions than they are in the streets.
There have been a few programs that attempt to help children deal with the conflicts in their everyday lives by meeting street children more on their own terms. Such programs are largely influenced by the philosophies of Paulo Freire and place an emphasis on street education. One such program, Peru's Educators of the Street, sends social workers and educators to the streets to provide education, resources, and social support to street children.
Rather than forcing them into rehabilitation centers, the program strives to create space for children to form trusting relationships that recognize children as active agents with multiple facets to their lives, not just vulnerable victims to be rescued from the street and reformed. However, such programs have been limited in recent years by international children's rights campaigns that remain rooted in discourses of global childhood as a time for play and school, and to be spent with a nuclear family, not in the streets and not working. This has limited the ability of such programs to maintain street-oriented philosophies and has arguably further marginalized and excluded the very children they are trying to help (Aufseeser 2014d). Further, there is a lot of criticism that NGOs that work with children in the spaces of the streets are enabling them to stay there (Thomas de Benitez 2007). Such criticism reflects an inherent tendency to assume that the end goal is to get young people off the streets, rather than to improve their overall well-being.When programs narrowly conceive of streets as negative violent environments and attempt to remove children from these spaces, they eliminate a primary space of work and support in some children's lives. In doing so, they directly hinder children's ability to effectively create livelihood strategies and protect themselves. Even when children are sleeping in the streets, they often still maintain connections to various family members, who will provide them with support or care on a periodic basis. Some children may see the street as a temporary refuge, before they return home or to other residential facilities (Conticini and Hulme 2007). In this sense, efforts to keep children off the streets may make them worse off by eliminating a space that is essential to their coping mechanisms. Aufseeser (2014c) found that anti-child labor and begging laws, and the police persecution that follows, push children into more marginal situations but nonetheless continue to be justified in the name of children's own “protection.” More generally, Bourdillon (2006) found that children working in the streets are exposed to greater levels of aggression and harassment from police when their work is considered to be illegal, and Van Blerk (2005) argued that frequent street clearances disrupted children's social networks.
Rather than assuming what outcomes are best for children, policy makers and practitioners should incorporate young people's own perspectives of what matters (Thomas de Benitez 2007).There is also often a tendency for programs addressing violence in street children's lives to focus on the children themselves, or the families from which they come. However, such narrow focuses overlook the relationship between structural inequality and the violence in children's everyday lives, as mentioned above. Instead, responses need to focus on communities, as well as specifically address poverty and inequality in society more generally (Thomas de Benitez 2007).
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