Street-Frequenting Young People in Fiji

Theory and Practice

Patrick Vakaoti

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9783319630786
• eBook ISBN:
  9783319630793
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Comparative Politics
• Index: Social Sciences

Analyses real-life narratives

Uses a critical postmodern stance

Provides policy recommendations

© The Author(s) 2018

Patrick VakaotiStreet-Frequenting Young People in Fijihttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63079-3_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction: Making the Case for Understanding Street-frequenting Young People

Patrick Vakaoti¹

(1)

Department of Sociology, Gender and Social Work, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand

Abstract

In Fiji the visibility of street-frequenting young people conjures a public and often moral agenda that despises their presence and detests their activities. This naïve view often fails to consider the structural factors and the multiple subjectivities that embody a street existence. This chapter introduces this complexity, situating street-frequenting young people in this reality and argues that they are best understood from a critical postmodern stance. It concludes with a description of the book’s chapter overviews.

Keywords

Street-frequenting young peopleYouthFijiCritical theoryPostmodern

End Abstract

In Fiji, street-frequenting children and young people, most commonly known as ‘street kids’, are highly visible. Their street existence outside the normal spaces of the home, family, the school and village or community makes them ‘out of place’ (Cresswell 1996). The visibility of street-frequenting young people conjures a public and often moral agenda that despises their presence and detests their activities. This naïve view often fails to consider the structural factors and the multiple subjectivities that embody a street existence. This book intends to unravel this complexity. It draws on the narratives of a select group of street-frequenting young people to demonstrate that street-frequenting is both an outcome and a process available to young people whose lives are subject to structural inequalities, spatial control and moral expectations. Following the works of Hecht (1998) and recently Farrugia (2016) the book does not view street-frequenting young people as a social problem. Unlike these publications that refrain from making recommendations, this book does otherwise. It reflects the words of Ife (1999, p. 220) who says that “unless knowledge has some form of practical utility in helping people to articulate their needs and work towards having them met, it is not particularly important”.

From this position the book appears ambitious, and it is. This is because it is the first literary project attempting to understand street-frequenting young people, a small but growing cohort of Fiji’s population, conspicuous as the result of global changes and influences. Equally so, it is an attempt to inform the debate on responses to a global phenomenon from the inside, where both academia and practice discourses are lacking. Street-frequenting is both a subjective and material experience either trivialised or glorified. However, no young person on the streets intends to remain there forever. Bret who has lived on the streets of Suva, Fiji’s capital since the age of 15 echoes this well: “I envisage that one day I will get married, have children and have a good house. It’s those things that we all think about.” These basic human aspirations are difficult to ignore; they together with the misunderstanding about the situation of street-frequenting young people provide the essence for this project that has both academic and practical implications.

These intentions are inherent in the book’s title. It adopts as a framework a critical postmodernism approach to situate oppression and human rights violations experienced by street-frequenting young people and how these can be reconfigured through critical practice considerations. These are not dogmatic but offered as guidelines particularly for the primary geographical audience of this book: Fiji and the broader Pacific where the ‘helping profession’ is rarely institutionalised or in situations where they are have poorly established laws, policies and practice standards. The reference to theory and practice provides the impetus to generate conversations about how marginalised members of our societies are understood.

A Note on Terminology

In Fiji children and young people occupy a subordinate social status in relation to adults. In addition the distinction between children and young people on the streets is not made. They are generally referred to as ‘street children’. The book refers to them as street-frequenting young people, although it is boys and young men who are more visible. The term is borrowed from an Australian study in 1996 referring “to a particular behaviour of spending a lot of time [hanging out, working or engaging in illegal activities] on the streets” (Pe-Pua 1996, p. 3). Street-frequenting is adopted because it does justice to the young people in the absence of any Fiji-specific definition. Secondly, children and young people on Fiji’s streets do not reflect the commonly adopted UNICEF categories of children “of the streets” and children “on the streets” (Panter-Brick 2002, p. 150). Instead they exist within a web of interrelated domains that include but are not limited to the home, village, schools and welfare organisations. The street is one of the many spaces that young people access. This fluidity reflects greatly on the shifting identities of contemporary young people.

Street-frequenting Young People in Fiji

At present there is no official statistic on the number of street-frequenting young people in Fiji. About 12 years ago newspaper articles reported an estimated 40 street kids in Suva, Fiji’s capital, and 15 street kids in Lautoka, Fiji’s second city. In 2010, the International Labour Organization (ILO) sampled a total of 214 street kids aged between 5 and 17 years in Fiji’s main urban centres for its child labour survey. Of these children, the majority were male and frequented Suva’s streets (ILO 2010). Despite the fluid nature of how street children are defined, this number would be even greater if those over the age of 18 years are considered. These young people continue to exist given the concerns about their presence articulated by the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Lautoka City Council in a Fiji Times article of June 24, 2017 (Chaudhary 2017).

The number of street-frequenting young people in Fiji is meagre when compared to big cities of Latin America, Africa and Asia. However, any figure is significant for it is used as a “powerful strategy to sensitize audiences” (de Moura 2002, p. 356). This is often followed by the moral panic and anxiety about their presence (Monsell-Davis 1986; Hicks 1999a, b; Heatley 1999; Khan 1999; Kikau 2003) particularly in a country that prides itself in traditional caring frameworks (Ravuvu 1988).

Fiji’s urban centres specifically Suva, Lautoka and Nadi at a glance appear to be thriving. On the other hand, they demonstrate “the failures of postcolonial development, in the manner in which a series of social, economic and environmental problems have become concentrated there” (Connell 2003, p. 245). Unemployment, poverty and the growth of informal settlements characterise these urban centres (Connell 2003; Lingam 2004; Gounder 2005). Street-frequenting young people exist as symptoms of these urban issues and whose recognition is derived from their growing visibility in a space not ‘traditionally’ meant for them. Subsequently they are seen to be spatially dislocated and out of place (Connolly and Ennew 1996; Cresswell 1996; West 2003).

The spatial dislocation of street-frequenting young people invokes an at-risk discourse about their existence. This stems from the perception that the streets are often dirty, dangerous and unsafe (Cresswell 1996; Ennew and Kruger 2003; Valentine 2004). Consequently, the sight of children and young people making a living or simply having fun conjures different reactions ranging from concern for their welfare to the fear and apprehension of the threat they pose. This is because they at times pester and annoy members of the public, block shop verandas, beg, sleep rough and are known to engage in petty criminal activities like pick-pocketing and wallet-snatching. The media, especially newspapers, contribute to this at-risk discourse with headlines such as ‘Children steal to live in city’ (Hicks 1999a), ‘Street kid guilty of taxi robbery’ (Fiji T...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction: Making the Case for Understanding Street-frequenting Young People
• 2. Childhood and Youth in Fijian Society: In and Out of Place
• 3. Street-frequenting Young People: Structural and Discursive Positioning
• 4. Leaving Home to Be ‘Out of Place’
• 5. The System: Street-frequenting Young People and Their Social World
• 6. Surviving the System
• 7. Reclaiming and Reconsidering Relationships with Street-frequenting Young People
• 8. Conclusion: Reflections About Engaging with Street-frequenting Young People
• Back Matter