Considering an agency–vulnerability nexus in the lives of street children and youth

ABSTRACT

This article seeks to engage in a critical debate around the sociocultural contexts and academic understandings of agency and vulnerability. It proposes an agency–vulnerability nexus as a useful conceptual tool to consider these linked concepts and how they have been related in the literature on children and youth and across social and cultural contexts. We use the term ‘nexus’ as we seek to explore ‘agency’ and ‘vulnerability’ not as antonymic binaries but as multi-dimensional connections created both by individuals and by the sociocultural settings in which they inhabit. Drawing on secondary analysis of data from Growing up on the Streets, a longitudinal ethnographic research project where street children and youth were both participants and researchers, this article examines the applicability of the agency–vulnerability nexus among young people living in street settings. It concludes that by acknowledging a plurality of conceptual perspectives around children and youth agency, the agency–vulnerability nexus can be used conceptually to better understand street children and youth’s experiences.

KEYWORDS:

• Agency
• vulnerability
• nexus
• children
• street settings

Funding

Funding obtained from the University of Dundee through the Scottish Funding Council/GCRF fund.

Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge support from the Scottish Funding Council/Global Challenges Research Fund for funding and the University of Dundee for hosting, the Growing up on the Streets Early Career Fellowship Programme, which enabled the production of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. We use the terms children and youth interchangeably with young people throughout this article to refer to young people from the ages 12–24. Similarly, we use the terms boys and girls and young men and young women when discussing gender differences in experience.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ernestina Dankyi

Ernestina Dankyi is Research Fellow at the Centre for Social Policy Studies, University of Ghana. Her research focuses on diverse groups of children and adolescents affected by migration. In 2020, she had a Growing up on the Streets ECR Fellowship at the University of Dundee, Scotland, where she was involved in analysing and writing from the largest qualitative data set on street children in three African countries. Currently, she is engaging Civil Societies Organisations that work with street children to form partnerships to demand social justice from the government for street children.

Lorraine van Blerk

Lorraine van Blerk is Professor of Human Geography at the University of Dundee, UK. She is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and holds an Honorary Professorship at the Children’s Institute, University of Cape Town. Her research focuses on issues of social (in)justice and (in)equality, particularly in the lives of marginalised young people. She is currently working on several major research projects including Growing up on the Streets, a multi-year longitudinal and co-produced research project with street youth in Ghana, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zimbabwe, and the associated ECR Fellowship Programme which funded this collaboration and publication

Janine Hunter

Janine Hunter is Researcher in Geography, at the University of Dundee, UK. Since 2013, she has been researcher on Growing up on the Streets, specialising in qualitative coding and analysis and co-produced impacts, including story maps. Janine was a researcher and co-investigator in the ECR Fellowship Programme. She has also worked on projects around refugees, environmental sustainability and trafficking in human beings. Janine is undertaking a part-time PhD on the impacts and experiences of intimate partner relationships among street youth in Accra, Ghana.

Alison McFadden

Alison McFadden is Professor of Mother and Infant Public Health at the University of Dundee. She leads a multi-disciplinary research group, the Mother and Infant Research Unit, that aims to improve the health and well-being of women, babies, children and their families and to reduce health inequalities. A midwife and experienced health services researcher, Alison’s work addresses inequities in health outcomes and access to services of women and children from vulnerable populations. She is currently involved in research to strengthen midwifery in India, Ghana and Palestine. She was a mentor on the Growing up on the Streets ECR Fellowship Programme.