The Invisible Citizens Roaming the City Streets

Abstract

Children living in the streets and supporting themselves through various kinds of street-based jobs have become a visible social phenomenon in urban Sudan. This article analyses the making of street children's subcultures by discussing their everyday street lives within the cultural, social, political and educational settings. In order to understand street children, not only as an urban social phenomenon, but also as active social agents who are categorised by the State and the urban privileged classes in very specific terms, I have employed a multi-pronged approach to interview them to contextualise their everyday lives and discourses to reveal their abilities as agents for the nation's future, and to push the society's efforts to make them into capable but loyal citizens.