Recognizing agency of children: Exploring the experiences of street working children in Addis Ababa

The term 'street children‘ is a pejorative expression that is applied to all children living and working on the streets. It connotes children as delinquent and innocent victims. Most studies focused more on street status of children than their work experiences and relational fabrics. Hence, this paper aimed at exploring working experiences of street working children in Addis Ababa. Exploring how children construct themselves, what they work and why, and what working relationship do they have is relevant to fully recognize children‘s agency. Exploring such experiences enables to understand how children‘s opportunities, challenges and vulnerabilities differ across child works who engaged in different street activities. It also enables to understand what children and their experiences speak out about their street works. I have applied ethnographic qualitative research to explore children experiences from their natural setting. My sample considers shoe shining and lottery vending activities. These activities are the two dominant, but differently structured street occupations. The study has focused on children under 18 years old. However, to create understanding how street career situated generationally, a youth, an adult, and an old man who has been engaged in street activities were incorporated in my sample. In-depth informal interviews, observation, and life stories of past street workers were key data collection instruments of this study. To illuminate children as capable social agents, I have integrated theories from 'child work‘, 'childhood‘, and 'street children‘ studies. The finding of the paper shows that children engage in street occupations which they assumed affluent. They construct themselves as workers who are different from 'street children‘. Streets are constructed as workplaces. Children‘s dignity and self-worth are situated in their occupation. They consider their ability to pay their daily experiences. Their culture is not different from the mainstream society. They keep their dignity by behaving as workers than supposedly 'street children‘. Different occupations have different working relationships and working environment. Hence, opportunities and vulnerabilities are different. Despite the existence of vulnerabilities, children developed resilience and form groups to maximize their benefits. The paper also finds out that exit from the streets is not a direct function of generation. Rather, it is a complex function of success on streets, dignity, education level, and subjective attitude towards the age appropriateness of an occupation. The findings are very important to reconstruct streets as workplaces. It also enables to reconstruct street working children based on their work. Moreover, it enables to recognize that children lack recognition and respect than ability to work.