For the 2006 session of the Institute, the theme that has been
selected is childhood and youth livelihood on the margins with
particular emphasis on street children and the lumpen youth.
This is a theme that has been recurrent in the study of
processes of social change in Africa; in recent times, it has
been kept in view by the contexts of conflict, disease,
prolonged economic decline, and demographic change that have
been important features of politics, economy and society across
the continent. Thus, although much work has been done in the
past on the street child and more recently on the lumpen youth,
the connections of child and youth marginalisation to political
instability, violent conflicts, state retrenchment, policies of
marketisation, and diseases such as the HIV/AIDs pandemic have
remained generally under-explored both empirically and
conceptually. Even more under-explored are the various new
and/or reconfigured contextual factors that define the framework
for the marginalisation of the younger members of society. These
factors are political, economic, social and demographic in
nature and they speak to broader processes of transition and
change in society that have impacted adversely on children and
the youth. Thus, while the dominant, traditional explanations of
child and youth disadvantage and disaffection such as the
changing structure of the family, the decline of “tradition”,
the poor appeal of formal education, and shifts in social values
may still be generally relevant, new factors connected with
accelerated processes of urbanisation that have generally gone
hand-in-hand with the expansion of the boundaries of the
informal sector, deepening of social inequalities in the context
of the collapse of social policy, increased migratory flows
within and across national borders, and the massive and
accelerated refraction of global processes and trends into local
contexts, among others, have emerged into significance to merit
closer attention.
In part because of the new contextual factors, the worlds of the
street child and the lumpen youth have witnessed important
changes, including the evolution of unique linguistic forms,
which also deserve to be studied in their own right. These
worlds are mostly informal, even though they also bear distinct
relations of power and are governed by clear rules, including
rules of entry. The streetchildren and lumpen youth are mostly
concentrated in urban centres. Anecdotal evidence from different
parts of Africa suggests that the female population among them
has also grown significantly even though their world is still be
ruled predominantly masculinist chauvinisms manifesting
themselves in different ways from language to dressing.
Furthermore, the street children and lumpen youth maintain
complex relations with the formal processes and structures of
politics and the economy, relations which also highlight the
agency which they are able to exercise in projecting their
interests and contributing to the shaping of the broader
macro-political, economic and social context within which they
operate.
Through the theme of the 2006 session, participants in the
Institute are being invited to re-read child and youth
marginalisation
in contemporary Africa by undertaking acritical assessment of
the sources, nature, dimensions andsignificance of street
children and lumpen youth in local,national and even regional
and global political, social,economic processes. Participants
will be encouraged toreview and re-think the relevant literature
on the subject;analyse the empirical evidence and insights which
is avail-
