Marit Ursin

‘Wherever I lay my head is home’ – young people's experience of home in the Brazilian street environment

Although academic research on street children is increasing, few have discussed the multiple meanings of home, as well as young peoples perspectives on their homeless status. Drawing on several qualitative fieldwork studies in Salvador, Brazil, this article explores the ‘home’ narratives of a group seldom appraised: the grown-up ‘street children’ of the 1980s and 1990s. Although many of these young people may be described as homeless in a territorial sense, their narratives demonstrate the complex ways in which many feel or have felt at home in the streets of a middle-class neighbourhood. The feeling of being at home is closely interlinked to aspects they find important in their everyday lives, namely that of autonomy, safety and belonging. This analysis illustrates earlier ignored dimensions of why young people choose the street rather than home, and in addition, challenges some common definitions and assumptions.

‘The City Is Ours’: The Temporal Construction of Dominance among Poor Young Men on the Street in a Brazilian Elite Neighbourhood

This article explores how young Brazilian men from poorer areas transcend socio-geographical boundaries by inhabiting the streets of an elite neighbourhood. Drawing on several periods of qualitative fieldwork, the article demonstrates the complex and dynamic character of the relationship between the young men and the formal residents and traders. It reveals temporal patterns of day and night, where the young mens social positions shift from subordinate diurnal (as serving workers) to dominant nocturnal positions (as potential attackers). Analysing the interactional patterns between the two groups regarding sentiments of trust and fear, the multifaceted and sometimes incoherent relations reveal social inclusion and exclusion as well as street protection and crime. The article also dismantles some common dichotomies within research on crime and fear of crime, emphasising that these young men are both victims and offenders, fearful and fearsome.

Freedom, mobility and marginality: an interdisciplinary study of the historical roots of contemporary street youth in urban Brazil

ABSTRACT This study is focused on the lives of street youth in urban Brazil through an interdisciplinary and cross-historical approach, providing a conceptual analysis of three different but interconnected sources of knowledge: A historical study of vagrants in the 1800s by [Fraga Filho, Walter. (1996). Mendigos, Moleques e Vadios na Bahia do Século XIX. São Paulo: HUCITEC/EDUFBa], the novel Jubiába by [Amado, Jorge. ([1935] 1984). Jubiába. New York: Avon Books] on the life of a youth on the streets in the 1930s, and empirical material from a current ethnography of boys and young men on the street. This approach facilitates a broader perspective on stability and change regarding the dynamics of street life, allowing cross-historical themes to surface. It reveals how young men on the street challenge socio-spatial and moral boundaries. While their marginal position empowers them and increases their mobility, it also encumbers their trajectories. The conclusion arrived at is that marginality and mobility are closely interlinked, as marginality is not only the cause but also consequence of mobility, and sometimes even the obstruction of it.

“When the Sun Rises, I Sleep”: The Ambiguities of Public Sleep among Young Brazilians on the Street

This article draws on six periods of fieldwork in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, stretching over a decade. Sleep ethnographies are explored through 24-hour participant observation among a specific street population and narrative interviews with 12 young men. The empirical material shows how sleeping on the street means making conscious choices and continuous risk negotiations, seeking to reduce risk of attacks, abductions, and homicides while being most vulnerable. The safety strategies employed demonstrate the ambiguities of sleeping in public, revealing how co-sleeping is both a way of seeking safety and a source of risk, how sleeping in the public gaze is perceived as comforting by some and detested by others, and why darkness and silence are desired by most, but sunrise and movement are preferred by some. The street dwellers’ relationships with peers, passersby, and police are in constant flux, and the places they appropriate for sleep are shaped by time and social relationships. The article concludes that the sleep patterns are responses to as well as reinforce the ambiguities of the wider social, spatial, and temporal dimensions of street life.