The Deprivation of Street Children in Kampala: Can the Capability Approach and Participatory Methods Unlock a New Perspective in Research and Decision Making

Summary

This article is published in the journal Mondes en développement and is free to read online at Cairn.info.

During the design of the research, which aims to understand the deprivation of street children in Kampala (Uganda), we embraced the view of children as social actors. This view is now quite well-established and it is based on the results of several studies that redefine the role of children from passive recipients to participants playing an active role in the lives of their families, communities and societies (see for instance, Feeny and Boyden, 2004 ; Ballet et al., 2006). Furthermore, more studies are providing evidence that there are many issues that even very small children are capable of understanding and to which they can contribute thoughtful opinions (Lansdown, 2001). Therefore, in this study children are no longer seen merely as recipients of services or beneficiaries of protective measures, but rather as human beings entitled to rights and participants in actions affecting them, human beings having certain capabilities and social actors, able to express their points of view and priorities, and endowed with agency, values, and aspirations that need to be taken into account by wider society (Biggeri et al., 2009, forthcoming). These considerations determine the need for a more child-centered approach including ‘vulnerable’ children both in research and decision making. In the research design, however, other crucial questions arise: which informational space should be used for the analysis? What are the best methods for children participation in research and decision making? In this research, we decided to explore street children deprivation in Kampala through the innovative combination of Amartya Sen’s capability approach (CA) and participatory methods. Even if the literature on child poverty and street children has grown recently, it is still the case that few papers concentrate on children and the capability approach (Biggeri et al., 2009, forthcoming). Furthermore, in Uganda little academic research on street children in Kampala has been carried out so far, and none of these studies apply the CA. This research project conducted in 2005 was the first study to adopt the capability approach with children using a wide range of participatory methods and exploring the informational space of capabilities, including non-material aspects of well-being (Anich et al., 2009). This paper is structured in two parts. The part following this introduction provides a brief background on street children in Kampala and outlines the research design and methodology used in the field research. In particular, we detail our survey-based method and participatory tools. In the second part, we present the main results, with a focus on the main capabilities dimensions of child well-being identified by the street children of Kampala.