Four decades of Brazilian and international research on street children

Abstract

The last 40 years has yielded a vast body of literature on street children. In this article, we reflect on the knowledge accumulated by several generations of scholars and across two bodies of research. The article’s aim is twofold: 1) To conduct a meta-narrative review, mapping out the contours of Brazilian and Anglophone literature on street children since the 1980s until today. 2) To bridge these two bodies of literature through reflections on similarities and differences. In so doing, we identify some overall tendencies in which street children have been described, debated, and theorized and bridge the two bodies of literature that often remain separated.

‘She does not make me do it, but I want to help her’: Relational family interdependence of street-connected youth in Recife, Brazil

“…Brazilian research has widely adopted the notions of children and adolescents being ‘subjects of rights’ and ‘in street situations’ and who live in the context of extreme vulnerability (Rizzini and Couto, 2018). While non-Brazilian Anglophone research has focused on street peers and how they are portrayed as a substitute family (Ursin and Rizzini, 2021), Brazilian research has long rejected the narrative of street-connected youth being abandoned by their families. Yet, in Brazilian society and popular discussion street-connected youth are perceived as abandoned, ‘nobody’s child’ (Morais et al, 2010) or ‘social orphans’ (Schwinger, 2007).…”