Being in Public: The Multiple Childhoods of Mexican Street Children

Summary

Media typify young people on the streets as antisocial, violent and associated with organized crime and drugs. Policy makers respond with regulatory, surveillance and exclusionary measures. In contrast to these moral panics about ‘youth’, ‘street children’ tend to be seen as powerless, disorganized and vulnerable, especially when located in the developing world, meriting of charity or welfare policy. Working in Puebla, Mexico, we investigated how young people who work, and occasionally sleep, in public spaces construct their identities in threatening environments, and how they mobilize or are mobilized within
social and civic activity.