Who is a street child?
There is no international agreement on the definition of ‘street children’, and the label of ‘street children’ is increasingly recognized by sociologists and anthropologists to be a socially constructed category that in reality does not form a clearly defined, homogeneous population or phenomenon. UNICEF developed the earliest definitions and categories of street children: • Children ‘of’ the street (street-living children), who sleep in public spaces, without their families • Children ‘on’ the street’ (street-working children), who work on the streets during the day and return to their family home to sleep • ‘Street-family children’ who live with their family on the streetBut research and practice have surfaced an enormous variation in children’s experiences and considerable overlap between these three groups: for example some children live on the streets all the time, others only occasionally or seasonally, while others move between home, street and welfare shelters. Some retain stro
