De symbolische constructie van straatkinderen. Jongens en meisjes van Plaza Garibaldi (Mexico-Stad)

Samenvatting

The Symbolic Construction of Street Children. Boys and Girls from Plaza Garibaldi Mexico City. A critique of the Dutch media's construction of street children (banda) in Mexico City as unrealistic and sentimental. Ethnographic data, 1989-1996, provide a context for differentiating between 50+ categories of banda in terms of forms of legal and illegal employment, domestic situations, and survival strategies. It is found that the banda actively reinforce these differences within and between groups. The phenomenon is thus understood as a symbolically constructed and deconstructed "ordered chaos," with continuously shifting power relations exercised by the children themselves as well as by other agents (eg, police, welfare workers). 61 References. Adapted from the source document.