ancient cities

at restaurants or riding on buses, students, NGO
workers, police, security guards, and researchers,
all of whom influence their identities in different
ways. They have to learn from early on when it
is necessary to be cute (to earn money), macho or
streetwise when hanging out with their friends,
friendly (to NGO workers), deferent (to authority
or older street people), or hostile (to street
enemies). Their identities are as fluid, and shift as
frequently, as the spaces in which they operate, in
response to their changing environments.
Street Life
To survive on the streets, a street child must be
socialized to a series of norms, ideals, and group
processes and a distinct code of ethics that controls
behavior on the streets. The most important relationship
a street child will form is with other street
children, with whom they develop collective strategies
as a form of resistance to the perceptions held
of them by the outside world.
Studies in Canada and Indonesia have described
a child’s life on the street as a career, which may be
understood as a solution to a child’s personal
troubles. Their careers provide a matrix within
which they can regain feelings of belonging and
self-worth, contest their marginalization, and counteract
the overload of negative identities attributed
to them by the state and mainstream society.
A street child’s social world may be understood
as a kind of a family system, which embodies other
groups of the street, including ex–street kids and
other street people, and which adheres to particular
patterns of behavior and a discernible system of
values and beliefs. These street community values
often include principles of solidarity, individual
survival, freedom and independence, social and
work hierarchies, the understanding of slang and
street codes (including macho behavior and drug
use), and some unique attitudes toward life on the
street. At times street children need to act on the
fundamental value of individual survival, but at
other times they must rely on the interdependence
and solidarity within their social group of other
street children. This is because peer support characterizes
and underpins their daily lives and is
directly tied to personal survival.
As street children reach adolescence, they often
find street life gets tougher due to the changing
Suburbanization
779
perceptions of them by society. Many studies have
observed how as they reach puberty, street boys
are no longer seen as cute but are viewed with
suspicion. It is at this stage in their career when
they are more likely to turn to crime to survive.
Alternatively they may decide to try and go home
if they able to and to try and reintegrate back into
mainstream society. Often, however, if children
have been on the street for a long time, they are
socialized to street life and find it difficult to live a
normal life at home, and so they return to the
street once more.
See also Crime; Favela; Homelessness
Further Readings
Harriot Beazley
Aptekar, Lewis. 1988. Street Children of Cali. Durham,
NC: Duke University Press.
Beazley, Harriot. 2003. “The Construction and
Protection of Individual and Collective Identities by
Street Children and Youth in Indonesia.” Children,
Youth and Environments 13(1). Retrieved April 22,
2009 (http://www.colorado.edu/journals/cye/13_1/
Vol13_1Articles/CYE_CurrentIssue_Article_
ChildrenYouthIndonesia_Beazley.htm).
Connolly, Mark and Judith Ennew. 1996. “Introduction:
Children out of Place.” Childhood 3(2):131–46.
Ennew, Judith and Jill Swart-Kruger. 2003.
“Introduction: Homes, Places and Spaces in the
Construction of Street Children and Street Youth.”
Children, Youth and Environments 13(1). Retrieved
April 22, 2009 (http://www.colorado.edu/journals/
cye/13_1/Vol13_1Articles/CYE_CurrentIssue_
ArticleIntro_Kruger_Ennew.htm).
Hecht, Tobias. 1998. At Home in the Street: Street
Children in Northeast Brazil. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press.
Lucchini, Riccardo. 1996. “The Street and Its Image.”
Childhood 3(2):235–46.
Lusk, M. 1992. “Street Children of Rio de Janeiro.”
International Social Work 35:293–305.
Su B u r B a n i z a t i o n
Suburbanization can be viewed as the decentralization
of the city and the town, and decentralization