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The Agency of Children in Street Situations

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Children in Street Situations

Part of the book series: Children’s Well-Being: Indicators and Research ((CHIR,volume 21))

Abstract

The dominant view holds that agency refers to the capacity of actors to influence the ways in which society functions, and structure refers to the social barriers that constrain this capacity to influence. Inspired by the structuration theory (Giddens 1979, 1984), introducing the notion of ‘duality of the structure’, a new framework is proposed whereby social practices are mediated by « thinking horizons » or « objects » – activities, relationships, values, images of self, and motivations – that preside over individual choices and reflexive monitoring. There are consequently five modes of action, or visible forms of the practical arrangement of daily life: entrepreneurial, relational, moral, identitary, and motivational. These modes of action are linked together and it is through this « structure of pertinences » that children give meaning to their situation on the street and develop their agency. Meanwhile, the transformability of situated agency strongly depends on the social representations of childhood in a given context.

Updated from Stoecklin 2018b, with permission by The International Journal of Children’s Rights.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In French ‘réductions au carré’.

  2. 2.

    Stoecklin, The participatory capability of children in street situations in Brazil and China. A four-year project (starting in 2019) supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (Grant No 10001A_179098).

  3. 3.

    The English version appeared in the publication of 2013. I mainly refer here to this publication.

  4. 4.

    « Black children » (undeclared).

  5. 5.

    Translation by the author.

  6. 6.

    This is the physical origin of the application of the notion of resilience in social sciences (see Cyrulnik and Jorlan 2012).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Children’s Right Studies, University of Geneva, Bramois/Sion, Switzerland

    Daniel Stoecklin

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Stoecklin, D. (2020). The Agency of Children in Street Situations. In: Children in Street Situations. Children’s Well-Being: Indicators and Research, vol 21. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19040-8_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19040-8_9

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