Agency as vulnerability: accounting for children going to the streets of Accra
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26512/lc.v20i41.4259Keywords:
Street children, Migrant children, Agency, Vulnerability, ChildhoodAbstract
This paper considers the agency of the children who have moved to the streets of Accra, Ghana. A largely unexamined concept, agency is commonly used in childhood studies to stress children’s capacity to choose. In the literature on street and working children, and a cognate area of children’s independent migration studies, children’s agency is made meaningful by reference to rational choice theories or to the normative force of childhood. It is our argument that both approaches leave unanswered important questions and to answer these we draw upon the arguments of social realism and the emphasis they place on human vulnerability as a source of agency.
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