No longer able or willing to be dependent: The marginalization and exclusion of street children in Accra, Ghana

This paper draws upon research with children who have migrated to live and work on the streets of Accra, Ghana. As part of the ‘paradigm shift’ in thinking about street children identified by Ennew and Swart-Kruger (2003), children’s presence on the streets and urban centres is no longer seen solely in terms of abandonment, orphaning or pathology (eg. Hecht 1998). Rather, debate now stresses children’s active decisions to leave home expressed in their response to the push factors of poverty, unemployment and family violence, alongside an appreciation of the pull factors of the advantages of city living. The analysis here develops this child-centred account of children’s migration, but its emphasis is somewhat different. Drawing upon an emergent literature on destitution (Devereux 2003), the contention is that children’s active decisions to migrate must be understood as culmination of their progressive and active exclusion from homes and communities. These children, its is argued, are destitute because they are no longer able to be dependent (Harris-White 2010). Seen in terms of events leading to their eventual disenfranchisement and disentitlement, their exclusion is characterised by the progressive failure to provide emotional and material support and/or the consequences of family disputes, violence and neglect. However, it is also argued that children are not simply the passive recipients of these exclusionary forces. Rather, their migration must also be seen as an erosion of their willingness to be dependent and how they look to life and work on the street as the basis for the construction of new social relations.