Agency does not mean freedom. Cape Verdean street children and the politics of children's agency

Abstract

At a time when children and youth are heralded by scholars and international organisations alike as active agents in the construction of their own lives and as individuals with participatory rights, I propose in this article, based on my fieldwork on street children and child protection policies in Cape Verde, an account of the interplay between children and youth and social interventions, exploring the tension between calls for agency and the right to autonomy at the theoretical level and enduring disciplinary ideas about child protection and rehabilitation.

Keywords:

• street children
• Cape Verde
• social intervention
• agency

Acknowledgments

Research funding was provided by the Portuguese FCT – Science and Technology Foundation through post-doctoral scholarship SFRH/BPD/27069/2006. Language proofing of this text was also funded by FCT through the Strategic Project 4038.

Notes

See Bordonaro 2011 for a children-focused ethnographic essay dealing specifically with street children in Cape Verde and their agency.

I draw heavily on empirical research conducted between 2007 and 2011, which included long-term participant observation and in-depth interviews, as well as analysis of a wide range of documents, official reports, media accounts and other secondary sources. Although I employ insights on Cape Verde provided by several disciplinary approaches, my methodological approach was largely anthropological. Fine-grained ethnographic analysis was carried out through participant observation, informal conversation, focus groups and in-depth semi-structured interviews, both with children in the street, with children within institutions, with their families and with social workers at different positions within state institutions and NGOs. Names of social workers have been changed to protect their identity.

Deborah Durham pointed to the possibility of ‘the agentive nature of youth’ being somehow ambiguous in specific situation like for e.g. warfare (Durham 2000, p. 116).

The Granja was the main rehab centre for children in Praia, Santiago Island. Even if still open, it has been entirely refurbished, and is today a rehab centre for drug addicts and alcoholics. For a short history of the Albergue, see Note 10.

I am referring here to the surge of youth gangs in several neighbourhoods at the peripheries of most major urban areas in Cape Verde. See Bordonaro and Lima 2011.

See for example (Hecht 1998, Márquez 1999, Kovats-Bernat 2006)

In Cape Verde, only boys commonly in their early teens live on or become closely engaged with the street as independent agents. This does not mean that girls do not appear on the street. Rather, in this context they are generally non-independent – carrying out economic activity for the household as street sellers, mostly accompanying their mothers. The different roles assigned to boys and girls within the household and Cape Verdean gender ideology explain why the street population is entirely male.

Kristin Ferguson (2006) Lorraine Young (2004) and Conticini and Hulme (2007) also recently approached the issue of ‘street children’ from a similar angle.

Conticini and Hulme in their analysis of Bangladeshi children's reasons for moving to the street claim that ‘the perception of street-living children held by the general public, policy makers and many social scientists in Bangladesh is filtered through, and conditioned by, a dominant narrative which posits that children are on the street because their parents or guardians cannot meet the household's basic material needs. The role played by violence within the household and the strength of the social bonds built by children on the street are too often ignored by commentators on this “problem” in Bangladesh. … Our main finding is that the breakdown of social relationships within the household, and not economic poverty, is the main cause of child migration to the street’ (2007, pp. 203, 207).

The Centro Juvenil Nho Djunga is the oldest state institution for children at risk in Cape Verde. Originally built in the late colonial period on the outskirts of Mindelo and called the Albergue de S. Vicente, it was headed by João Cleofas Martins ‘Nho Djunga’ (1901–1970), a photographer, writer, intellectual and philanthropist. In 1988 it was moved to the city centre and renamed after him and is today managed by the Ministry of Labour, Family and Solidarity. Virtually all children I met that had lived in the street for some time had also spent periods at the Nho Djunga.

At present, the ICCA (Instituto Cabo-verdiano da Criança e do Adolescente – Cape Verdean Institute for the Child and Adolescent, the major State player in the area of child protection) manages two rehab centres where children can be interned: one for girls in Assomada, and one for boys, in Picos (both in the interior of Santiago Island). In Mindelo, the Nho Djunga also provides this service for boys only, and is managed directly by the Ministry of Labour, Family and Solidarity.