Children’s right to the city: The case of street children

Abstract

Spanish

French

Children are important actors in the urban areas of Turkey since they make up the largest demographic group. Therefore, the reasons behind their being regarded as ‘passive’ should be re-examined, in view of the fact that they live and work in, and create and recreate the city. The purpose of this study is to elaborate the children’s right to the city concept from two different points of view using liberal and radical approaches within the theoretical framework provided by Marcuse in the right to the city discourse. The reason for choosing Marcuse is that at some points, his arguments meet with both a liberal and radical understanding of the right to the city. Therefore, these two approaches will be compared regarding children’s right to the city in Turkey in light of related literature. In the last part of the study, children’s right to the city will be discussed from these two perspectives with the particular case of street children derived from findings in the literature. It is revealed that while there are significant developments in Turkey at local and international level in terms of children’s right to the city and street children, there is still a need for a strengths-based perspective which positions children as active agents making decisions about their own lives and formation of urban space.

Keywords

Right to the city street children Turkey urban policy

Introduction

The notion ‘out-of-place’ has been a crucial part of ongoing discussions regarding the segregation of the urban space. Rather than considering social problems such as marginalization or racism, the expedient approach to the questions regarding the quality of the place has been employed, such as criticizing the people sleeping in stations rather than focusing on homelessness in New York (Creswell, 1996). On the other side of the discussion, a more equitable and inclusive approach to guide social policies regarding urban space has been adopted. There emerged a call for ‘cities for people, not for profit’ throughout the development of capitalism (Brenner et al., 2009). Thus, capitalist urban space has never been permanent; instead, it has been open to construction and reconstruction with the encounter of opposing social groups regarding both exchange- and use-value of the socio-spatial settings (Harvey, 1976; Lefebvre, 1996 [1968]; Logan and Molotch, 1987).

The ‘right to the city’ concept has emerged as an alternative to the taken-for-granted explanations for marginalization and exclusion of some of these conflicting groups and unequal distribution of public goods and services. This concept has become one of the most discussed concepts in urban research over the last decade. It has been debated and invoked by different commentators and at different levels. The right to the city goes beyond the improvement in the living conditions of citizens of the city and the city’s surroundings. It emphasizes the occupation and use of urban space through control over the city (Harvey, 2010). In this article, the concept of the right to the city is elaborated from a Marcusian point of view, drawing on liberal and radical approaches to the issue for the case of children. The reason for choosing Marcuse is that at some points, his arguments concur with both a liberal understanding of the right to the city and a radical one.

In the last part of the study, children’s right to the city will be discussed from these two perspectives with the particular case of street children in Turkey through questioning how much children are taken into account when discussing the ‘right to the city’ concept and in what sense this discussion is fed by radical or liberal-democratic aims. It is crucial to bring to light the hidden political, economic, and social dimensions affecting the creation of a particular urban environment for street children to examine their marginalization based on space and the coping mechanisms they develop to make it their own environment and to interact with other actors.

The right to the city

Henri Lefebvre is considered to have been the first to develop the concept, in his book Le Droit à la ville (1968). Specifically, it emerges from existing human rights doctrine and the particular rights of accessing shelter, clean water, health services, public spaces, and transportation (Lefebvre, 2003 [1970]). These are analyzed from the perspective of the ‘social function’ of all aspects of the infrastructure and public goods and services.

Lefebvre’s ideas, as stated by Purcell, of the right to the city were ‘a cry that initiated a radical struggle to move beyond both the state and capitalism’ (Purcell, 2013: 142). On the other hand, the implementation of this concept in today’s context by different government agencies can be read more through Marcuse’s approach. In his essay ‘From critical urban theory to the right to the city’ published in 2009, he is more interested in the practical problems of his day by placing them in a historical context. His search for long-lasting and across-the-board solutions through his three-pronged suggestion of ‘exposing, proposing, and politicizing’ implies more the promise of a liberal-democratic attitude towards the right to the city.

Elaborating on Lefebvre’s demand, Marcuse makes a vital contribution to the literature related to ‘the right to the city’ by asking questions as ‘Whose right are we talking about? What right is it we mean? What city is it to which we want the right?’ (2009: 185–189). He makes the analysis of Lefebvre and urban geographer David Harvey more concrete by answering the ‘whose’ question as the rights of those who are oppressed such as the hungry, those convicted of crimes, and the homeless who are victimized based on their race, ethnicity, religion, or gender. On the other hand, Lefebve’s cry is realized by those who are ‘oppressed in their social relationships, guilty perhaps for undeserved prosperity, unfulfilled in their lives’ hopes’ (p. 190).

While the question of whose right is a complicated one, it is asked by the leading scholars within the discussion of the right to the city, such as Harvey, who problematizes the owners of this right within today’s context in an interview. He claims:

I do not think we are in a position to define who the agents of change will be in the present conjuncture, and it plainly will vary from one part of the world to another. In the United States right now, there are signs that elements of the managerial class, which has lived off the earnings of finance capital all these years, [are] getting annoyed and may turn a bit radical. (2009)

However, there is no direct reference made to children within all of these studies as the agents of the changing urban space. It is open to debate whether we can include children in one of the groups Marcuse defines in his study, such as the directly oppressed analyzed within cultural terms by the dominant cultural, ethnic, and gendered society. While oppression based on age might be one aspect of this group, it needs to be further elaborated.

All these points made by Marcuse within a critical urban theory approach suggest that the right to the city, at heart, is a rejection of the capitalist system. After claiming that the right to the city is a right to state and demands something divergent from the prevailing city and society, which implies a totality as a whole, he argues that all old-world suggestions share the refutation of the intelligibility of a desirable future through holistic designs. Only through inclusive values, can the future be spelled out. This is the point at which Marcuse takes an interest in human rights and democratic aspects in order that a better future can be designed. An emphasis on a critical urban theory devoted to enhancing the right to the city through uncovering the shared backgrounds of deprivation and dissatisfaction, and on the importance of showing the common aspects of the demands of the majority, displays a both radical and liberal approach to the right to the city (Marcuse, 2009).

While Marcuse’s work implies a radical conception of the right to the city within his critical viewpoint, contemporary discussions follow more a liberal-democratic understanding of the right to the city, and they meet with Marcuse at some points. This framework can be better comprehended through looking at them from Locke’s approach to the state with its strong institutions vis-a-vis weak democratic control through elections. It makes a sharp distinction between public and private lives through which individual liberty is granted without any intervention from other citizens. From this point of view, the right to the city can be regarded as a ‘bonus’ right established by democratic states that have established already existing liberal-democratic rights. Hence, the state is the main actor at the center of future rights. Contrary to the radical approach to the right to the city as a means for further equality and freedom regarding control over the city, the liberal approach considers it more as a legal end that terminates the struggle.

Over the past 20 years, research has focused on different aspects of children’s right to the city, such as children’s ability to explore their urban settings on their own with independent mobility (Whitzman et al., 2010). The concept of ‘children’s independent mobility’ is defined as the right of citizens who are under 18 years old to discover the urban environment independently by bicycle, walking, or public transport (Hillman et al., 1990). Another line of research focuses on children’s encounters, experiences, and engagements in the urban setting and their emotional orientation to public life (Bartos, 2013; den Besten, 2010; Lutz, 2017; Sayer, 2011). Also, one part of the growing literature on urbanization and gender studies focuses on girls’ experiences in an urban setting, which are different from boys’ with high numbers of sexual harassment and sexual gratification (Aruldoss et al., 2020), and the specific case of female street children (Kaiser and Sinanan, 2020).

Throughout the recent developments following this line of research all around the world, certain institutions such as UN-HABITAT and UNESCO have shown a determination to operationalize the right to the city as a right belonging to a larger context of human rights (Sugranyes and Mathivet, 2010; UNESCO, 2006; UN-HABITAT, 2010). Thus, the primary inspiration for these projects is human rights discussions wherein the right to the city is regarded as an extension of the broader human rights set out in the United Nations’ Universal Declaration. UN-HABITAT, UNESCO, and the World Urban Forum are some of the organizations sponsoring the idea of the right to the city advanced by the UN; though criticized by Harvey, who argues that the freedom to change ourselves and our cities is one of the disregarded human rights (Harvey, 2008). Moreover, some groups other than the United Nations may support this traditional approach directly by purposefully collaborating with these UN institutions.

Therefore, the right to the city has become a goal to achieve included in urban policies to encourage some sort of equality and inclusion in cities. For this purpose, charters such as the World Charter for the Right to the City, the European Charter for the Safeguarding of Human Rights in the City, the European Charter for Human Rights, and the Montreal Charter of Rights and Responsibilities in cities were established. These developments have been considered as a response to a cry for help and sustenance by oppressed people, rather than an idea arising from only intellectual concerns based on the right to the city (Harvey, 2013). Nevertheless, these various groups meet halfway in terms of their attitude towards the right to the city with states’ role for guaranteeing this right for their citizens (Mayer, 2012).

In order to fulfill their aims, these institutions were further developed to suggest new rights in urban life be put into legal codes. The Charter for Women’s Right to the City is one of these, which seeks equal access to governmental institutions, safe housing conditions, urban facilities, physical security, and protection from all types of gender discrimination (Habitat International Coalition, 2005). Also, the Child Rights International Network has initiated a project named the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) through which conditions of human rights in each member state of the United Nations will be investigated every four years by the UN Human Rights Council (HRC), and their main goal is to make the right to the city of children the center of the project (Child Rights International Network, 2008).

Overall, drawing from the abovementioned narratives and various organizations at the national and international level, including civil society and urban social movements (e.g., GPR2C 2015, Mexico City Charter for the Right to the City of 2010, World Charter for the Right to the City of 2005), and from country or region-specific innovative intervention programs (e.g., Brazil, Colombia, Delhi, Ecuador, Egypt) and urban policy reports (e.g., policy report of Habitat III on the Right to the City and Cities for All, New Urban Agenda, Cities for Adequate Housing Manifesto), a general definition of the right to the city would be: ‘It is the right of all inhabitants (present and future; permanent and temporary) to use, occupy, produce, govern and enjoy just, inclusive, safe and sustainable cities, villages and settlements defined as common goods’ (United Cities and Local Governments, 2019). Hence, it comprises not only urban settings but all habitats from the smallest villages to the biggest metropolitan areas as collective rights, including children’s rights as a relatively new discussion based on the idea of children’s right to the city.

Children’s right to the city in Turkey

The concept of human habitat is the framework within which the policies regarding children and youth are considered with regard to two universal policies: Habitat I (Vancouver, 1976) and Habitat II (Istanbul, 1996). In these policies, the habitat concept is defined as a ‘regional and cross-sectoral approach to human settlements planning, which places emphasis on rural/urban linkages and treats villages and cities as two ends [points] of a human settlements continuum in a common ecosystem’ (Habitat International Coalition, 1996).

As an extension of Habitat II, specific commitments regarding child welfare have succeeded in Turkey. Besides national initiatives, Turkey’s participation in UNICEF, the International Labor Organization, and the Council of Europe revealed the country’s embrace of the efforts made at the international level. In 1990, Turkey signed the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and endorsed the Convention in 1994 (Government of Turkey and UNICEF, 1998). These are significant developments for a country with a young population: 23.1% are below 15 years old (TUIK, 2019). Such guidelines, such as the CRC, are promising for the development of urban policy that considers the children’s right to the city.

In Turkey, children’s rights are considered with regard to social and economic problems within the Turkish context. Increasing runaway teenage populations, children living or working on the streets in Istanbul and other cities, child labor, and petty crime committed by children are examples of these problems. They arise from the continuing effects of the privatization policies during the 1980s and economic instability in the 1990s, and ongoing migration from rural to urban areas, and they have a direct impact on the overall welfare of children (Libal, 2001). As a result of migration and urbanization, both integration and social exclusion and informalization processes took place at the same time within the restructuring period experienced in most developing countries. Children, especially those who cannot attend school despite the eight years’ mandatory education were one of the groups affected most by the growth of marginalized and deinstitutionalized groups in these countries (Bayat, 2000).

Necessary urban facilities for children have not been emphasized due to an increase in the existing urban population and the problems this burgeoning expansion brings with it. Environmental destruction, unplanned urbanization, and urban poverty are but a few of these problems. The problems regarding children’s rights such as violence, discrimination based on ethnic, cultural, social, and economic reasons, and poverty are some of the issues addressed through the discussion of children’s right to the city. The local outcomes resulting from global processes such as urbanization impact on children. In Turkey, the urbanization process consisted of opening up state land around urban areas to various groups without any planning controls (Marcuse and van Kempen, 2002). The price children are forced to pay for these processes, and the possible practical solutions for protecting children’s rights are questioned within these discussions; however, two approaches (radical and democratic) to the right to the city concept ask different questions.

Studies reporting an increase regarding children’s participation are considered as a strategy through which it is tried to highlight the basic needs of young citizens and ways to meet these needs (Tonucci and Rissotto, 1998). At the center of these concerns, there is the dimension of the competency of politicians as the active agents, while children are subjected to these rights endowed to them. The emphasis is placed on the use of public spaces such that through an uneven process of urbanization, children are constrained to spend their leisure time in enclosed spaces with indoor activities prearranged by adults. Tonucci and Rissotto (2001: 409) claim: ‘They have no opportunity to go outside with their friends and or to share the adventure of the gradual discovery of new places; they are not allowed to learn to cope with risks geared to their growing capabilities.’

Moreover, the ones who take the liberal approach stress the social psychological aspects of the issue, including concepts of socialization and imitation. They blame children’s exclusion from the city for their way of socialization. Germanos (1995, cited in Tonucci and Rissotto, 2001) claims that this way of socialization hinders children’s chance to observe adults in their play activities and obtain knowledge and specific skills through imitation and observation. This approach propounds that children complete a ‘healthy’ developmental stage by there being a standardized path for children to follow throughout their socialization. While all of these arguments share the idea that children are the active inhabitants of urban space, their main emphasis is on their nation-state citizenship based on children’s daily practices of using the urban space. This approach is parallel to what Marcuse calls neighborhood ethnic enclaves, rather than ghettos resulting from the exclusion by the white majority (Marcuse, 1997). For the streets occupied by these children, it is possible to define their places as different in terms of hierarchal status, functional role, and visible cultural divisions (Marcuse, 2001).

Therefore, use-value is stressed as a significant aspect, rather than the exchange-value of the cities and subdivisions in cities, while in today’s world, the property owners’ rights tilt the scale compared to inhabitants’ rights of use (Purcell, 2013). Moreover, the decision-making mechanism in urban planning works in favor of the exchange-value of the property rather than the use-value. The preference for living near certain kinds of people is reflected as an inevitable result of residential concentrations, which is not considered as a problem (Young, 2002). However, the liberal approach does not consider the right to the city as a struggle against the owners’ property rights to enhance children’s rights by considering them as active agents in the construction and reconstruction of the urban space. Some crucial questions are asked within this framework; however, they are not parallel with the ones asked within the right to the city discourse. Their main concern is based on more liberal-democratic perspectives.

Moreover, all the problems they associate with the use of urban space by children are the problems of the children of the middle class, and the solutions they propose are realized through the institutionalization of problems. These efforts of institutionalizing the right to the city are oxymoronic in themselves. The discrepancy here lies in making the concept of implying changing social, political, and economic relations through struggle as a part of existing social and political institutions like the UN. This relates our discussion to a broader debate on the relationship between agency and structure in challenging and transforming the prevailing power relations in the city.

Thus, the pertinent questions might be to ask which children have access to which facilities of urban life; for whom is the proper environment described above suitable and achievable; and to whom is the power given to decide and shape the urban space? These questions can be addressed through the radical approach to the right to the city discourse along with human rights initiatives put forward within Marcuse’s analysis.

Increasing inequality and marginalization among people living in urban areas has been one of the concerns triggered by rapid globalization and urbanization processes. The right to the city concept is one of the approaches employed to study the association between global restructuring and urban governance by different researchers in various areas. Within the radical body of theoretical and empirical works, the social uprisings witnessed in different cities worldwide are read through the right to the city lens. These movements are described as having economic, social, spatial, and environmental claims regarding justice and equality in these areas, especially regarding access for marginalized groups such as the homeless, disabled, and those who are discriminated against based on their ethnicity, race, or gender.

In several cases, the concept of the right to the city is considered as a flow, rather than a fixed goal to achieve, relating to the struggles for public space access and redefinition of citizenship by the researchers who employ a radical approach to the issue. It provides a more inclusive approach in terms of use and control of the urban space to light the road towards more strategic urban initiatives resulting in more considerable long-reaching economic changes.

Since the practical manifestations of this radical conception of the right to the city are rooted in struggle, the radical approach to the children’s right to the city is also grounded in challenging the top-down processes of development in the city. From this perspective, while charters such as UN-HABITAT and the Charter for Women’s Right to the City in principle denote Lefebvre’s ideal in terms of defending the supremacy of use-value of urban space over its exchange-value and enlarged understandings of citizenship, they are criticized for being insufficient in appealing to the structural change inherent to the right to the city (Lamarca, 2009).

Thus, institutional and promulgated aspects in urban policy regarding children’s right to the city are state-driven and regard children as victims of global processes of urbanization rather than active agents in the production of space. While children are passivized in the liberal approach by assigning the role of creating ‘child-friendly cities’ for children to state institutions, the radical approach handles the issue by assigning to children the role of agent in producing the space according to their needs.

Another distinctive feature of the radical approach is look at the relationship between children’s deprivation and discrimination against them based on social, economic, and cultural aspects by examining its roots in the prevailing capitalist social relations and how they are manifested in cities. The radical approach to the issue sees the necessity of transformation of the urban in terms of conceptual and administrative aspects, which will result in poverty reduction and economic inclusion. Hence, a children’s rights-based policy agenda is suggested, which is rooted in the coalition of progressive forces’ discourse on the hidden economic relations behind children’s deprivation (Dewi et al., 2020; Parnell and Pieterse, 2010).

Their main challenge to the liberal approach in terms of political attempts that fail to protect children’s civil rights agenda is that even when the fundamental needs of the children, especially lower-class children, are procured, institutional, social, economic, and environmental exclusion of poor children will continue. Recently, discussions have been held around contextual approaches by considering the ‘relational wellbeing’ of children from a radical perspective. Socio-spatial context, design, and politics together define urban planning with the impact of power and capital, which shape wider ‘socio-natures’ and, in turn, the relational wellbeing of children (del Pulgar et al., 2020). Hence, it is clearly stated that sustained struggle by all urban occupants is essential to perpetual use of produced and asserted spaces, which means a challenge to and the transformation of power relations.

Street children in Turkey

It was estimated that perhaps 100 million children were living on the streets in urban spaces around the world in 1989 by UNICEF (Campos et al., 1994). Just over a decade later, it was reported as more than 100 million (UNICEF, 2002). In 2005, it was stated by UNICEF that it is not possible to detect the accurate numbers, but it is most likely that there has been an increase in parallel to population growth, internal migration, and urbanization (UNICEF, 2005). While these statistics have been criticized by some scholars (Panter-Brick, 2002; Scanlon et al., 1998; Thomas de Benitez, 2007) as numbers produced to draw attention to the problems related to urbanization, the main problem is still not considered to be the quantity of these children (Ennew, 1994), but rather the fact that they exist. Also, related social problems such as street gangs (Covey, 2010) and street children’s rights (Ayuku, 2003; Dillon, 2008; Drane, 2010; Sauvé, 2003; Wexler, 2008) are still crucial parts of the ongoing discussions.

One reason for this ambiguity in statistics is the difficulty in providing an overarching definition for street children. The definition of the United Nations is as follows: ‘boys and girls for whom “the street” (including unoccupied dwellings, wasteland, and so on) has become their home and/or source of livelihood, and who are inadequately protected or supervised by responsible adults’. Hence, any child, whether homeless, working on the street, or a school dropout, is considered as a street child. Nevertheless, it is generally agreed upon by researchers that most of the street children are on-the-street, not of-the-street (see Woan et al., 2013).

Children on the street as working or socializing in the street but having a home to stay in are distinguished from children of the street who live on the street and have no family in general (Volpi, 2002). However, it is essential to state that street children are social players, as suggested by the social-player model (Terre des Hommes, 2010). Accordingly, children in street situations are not only victims of threats to urban life, they are active agents of the urban setting. Not only do they adapt their own situation, but also they are actively creating and recreating their own world as their street through their ‘street connections’ (Thomas de Benitez, 2011), which helps their subsistence (Yu et al., 2019).

The World Bank reported in 2012 that most of the street children live in low- to middle-income countries. As in other countries, in Turkey, street children are a well-known reality even if it is not possible to portray an exact picture of them as most of them do not have birth certificates or IDs. These children might be living with their families for intermittent periods or seasonally migrating from one city/region to another. In any case, the primary perspective in research of street children is that of ‘problem-solution’, which ignores the agency of the child and emphasizes the reasons for and solutions to their existence. Poverty and social unrest are two main problems regarded as the reasons behind families’ migration from rural to urban areas (especially from eastern parts) as it becomes a survival strategy for needy families in the rural parts of Turkey. The challenging conditions of urban life have brought about an increase in the number of street children (Bilgin, 2012; Turkmen et al., 2004).

Also, in Turkey, the division between the street-living and street-working child is unclear (Aksit et al., 2001; Turkmen, 1998; Turkmen et al., 2004). The two terms can be used interchangeably as children living on the streets may have a home, but prefer not to go there, or they may both work and live on the street. Further characterization and categorization of these children are needed as proposed by Philips (1994: 7), who provides subcategories: ‘children on the street keeping regular relations with their families; children of the street lacking regular and continuous relations with the family; and children without the family having been left alone to the street’. Thus, it is almost impossible to consider street children as one homogeneous social group since they also have various social, cultural, ethnic, and economic backgrounds (Pare, 2003).

The children who are working on the streets of the metropolitan cities of Turkey (mainly Istanbul) have been considered the result of urban poverty, neglect and domestic violence by parents, internal migration, and urbanization, even if reasons may vary based on different cultural and socioeconomic aspects (Aptekar 1994; Atauz, 1997; Dalfidan, 2020; Işık and Pınarcıoğlu, 2001; Standing and Tokman, 1991). Still, what makes Turkey distinct from other developing countries in terms of street children is that children working on the streets establish certain solidarity networks by attributing another meaning to the space that turns it into place (Kocadas and Ozgur, 2011). Even the friendship between these children is reported to be ‘sacred’; thus, any children new on the streets have to accept all the norms and rules of the existing groups on the street, where they get addicted to cigarettes or weed as a way of socialization with these groups. Also, committing a crime is encouraged by the group and a way to earn more respect among peers (Gungor, 2008).

It has also been reported by different studies that in Turkey, different to other countries, street-working or even street-living children do not suffer from a family breakdown; on the contrary, they have strong relations with their nuclear families and positive communication with their parents (Manandhar, 1994; Patel, 1990; Zeytinoğlu, 1989). Among street children suffering higher levels of depression in Istanbul, this is found to be related to poor family relations (Erbas, 2020). In eastern cities such as Diyarbakir, where the number of street children is the highest in the country with more than 20,000 street children, it was reported that families encourage their children to work on streets for economic reasons (Bilgin, 2012; Okumus, 2009). Hence, it is surmised that they are not forced to work on the street but rather convinced to do so in the belief that they contribute to the family income, which is very low. This vulnerability arising from displacement and leaving everything behind becomes their strength to establish strong solidary relations with others and street practices (Kocadas and Ozgur, 2011).

In order to comprehend more the dissonance between the radical and liberal approaches regarding children’s right to the city, their way of looking at street children as one deprived group will be elaborated through considering previous studies in related literature. I take as my starting point Hecht’s (1995) idea that ‘the street’ is an inherent mark of their identity and I will use this term rather than other names that are given such as ‘children at risk’. This group constitutes an essential part of urban space in most countries, as the UN estimates there are 150 million street children around the world (UNHCR, 2015). Their marginalization based on space and the coping mechanisms they develop to make the street into their environment and the other actors they interact with have attracted the attention of researchers in urban studies from different angles.

An inter-NGO program for street children ranging from infants (a few months old) to teenagers (up to 18 years old) defines them as children who have neither protection nor guidance from an adult responsible for them, and those who hold onto the street more than to their family as their home. The emphasis here is their lack of expected social relationships and being out of the box. The definition given by UNICEF for street children has the two distinct groupings, referred to earlier: ‘children of the streets’ and ‘children on the streets’ (Ennew, 1994). Most institutions and individuals approach the issue from a liberal perspective, highlighting delinquency, violence, abuse and victimization of street children. Their vulnerability to depraved and harmful impacts like criminal acts and drug addiction or glue-sniffing, besides their deprivation of rights to education and health facilities, are primary concerns as street children are often associated with social disturbances (Bajari and Kuswar, 2020; Sah et al., 2020).

Moreover, in 2007 the report State of the World’s Street Children: Violence was published by the Consortium for Street Children, which focuses on violence as the central aspect behind children’s existence on the streets (Thomas de Benitez, 2007). The main problem for authorities regarding street children is the prevailing situation in which both the actors and the victims are children, rather than their right to reshape their environment. The central claim is that violent experiences are accumulated by street children from a very early age in varied environments. Also, ‘youth gangs’ are regarded as an extension of street children since they seek protection due to instability and violence. As a result of this, these groups need to be secured from the violence that is born on the street. The goal proposed by all these institutions, politicians, and researchers is not to allow street children to be active agents of their own space and social relations, but instead to transform them into ‘positive forces for the development of the country’ such as engaging in martial arts groups (Scambary, 2006).

On the other hand, such stereotypical attitudes towards street children are challenged by those propounding the radical approach. Street children are considered not as a whole, a monolithic deprived group, but rather as varied and composite social agents and actors of their own spaces. They constitute a heterogeneous population that is both in the city and of the city: as the ones whose lives are structured by urban dynamics (Hamed, 2014). Also, this approach perceives the streets as the homes of children whose power and freedom to interact and affect the environment in a given context should be guaranteed. According to Crang (1998), through this power, these children’s position in society and the urban public space is reaffirmed, which allows them to survive in the virulent environment.

While the liberal approach proposes more proper use of urban public space according to its planned function, the streets are a space that is not designed for children to own, and the radical approach recognizes that prototypical public space is not valid for street children whose social life multifariously flows in time and space within urban design. Hence, their identity is transformed and established within this flow through which they construct various coping mechanisms empowering them to survive in the city.

Another critical point to make regarding how the radical approach perceives these children is the recognition of street children’s small, incremental actions as survival strategies. Hamdi (2004) claims that rather than significant actions of scale, sometimes they are the small-scale actions that have a more extensive influence on the long-term outcomes. One of these actions is resistance, not as a political action but rather as a cultural method of coping (Hamed, 2014). According to Cresswell (1996), if a contradiction arises between the ‘normative geographies’, where everything is placed correctly and adequately, and assemblages or entities, resistance occurs. Thus, the resistance of street children is rooted in the decontamination of space where they are relegated. While it can be regarded as the victimization of children who are subjected to commit criminal actions, begging or stealing from other users of the street to challenge their marginal position are some examples of these resistant actions through which the street is dominated by street children (Young, 2002). Their resistance and violent activities are seen to indicate their position as active social agents developing resilience in an oppressive social context (Bender et al., 2007; Ferguson et al., 2015; Stephenson, 2001; Thompson et al., 2002).

All in all, street children are not solely victims seeking a better life; rather, they are resourceful human beings. In Turkey, some of them are even community leaders and gatekeepers. Considering them as resources by emphasizing the need for their participation is compatible with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. While it is difficult to categorize them under one definition, street children have long been present in many countries and newly emerging in others too (Volpi, 2002). The immediate causes in Turkey are poverty, internal migration from rural to urban and east to west, school dropout, lack of housing, urbanization, and neglect and domestic violence. While the abovementioned developments in Turkey regarding the child-specific problems in the street are promising, there is still a need to apply available interventions or develop new ones to address street children’s problems. This is also a part of the right to the city; as Harvey puts: ‘if results are not prepossessing, we have to reclaim our right to change them’ (2006: 89).

Conclusion

In this article, the two approaches to children’s right to the city within a Marcusian framework, also drawing on influential scholars’ work regarding urban discourse, were discussed. In recent studies, it was reported that there has been an increase in children’s participation in the urban space, which is considered a deliberative strategy through which young citizens’ rights and obligations and possible ways of meeting these needs are emphasized. While these concerns are subjected to criticism as being political, the main emphasis is still on the use of public spaces such that through an uneven process of urbanization, children are constrained to spend their leisure time in enclosed spaces with indoor activities prearranged by adults.

Marcuse makes a vital contribution to these discussions considering the right to the city, by asking questions as ‘Whose right are we talking about? What right is it we mean? What city is it to which we want the right?’ While answering these questions, the liberal approach does not consider the right to the city as a struggle against the owners’ property rights to enhance children’s rights by considering them as active agents in the construction and reconstruction of the urban space. Instead, their main emphasis is on their nation-state citizenship based on children’s daily practices of using the urban space.

The scholars from a radical standpoint, as the second approach to the issue, see the necessity of transformation of the urban space in both conceptual and administrative aspects, which will result in poverty reduction and economic inclusion. These two approaches are discussed with regard to children’s right to the city in Turkey, taking the specific case of street children as a group spatially marginalized in the urban discourse in order to comprehend more the dissonance between radical and liberal approaches regarding children’s rights to the city. Most of the organizations and individuals approaching the issue from a liberal perspective highlight delinquency and the victimization of street children subjected to violence or abuse.

On the other hand, such stereotypical attitudes towards street children are challenged by the radical approach. Street children are considered not as a monolithic deprived group, but rather as varied and composite social agents and actors of their own spaces. The attempts to institutionalize the right to the city within the context of enhanced citizenship for the children bring about specific questions regarding the contradictory character of the programs and charters mentioned in the course of this article. How can you make a concept implying changing social, political, and economic relations through struggle a part of existing social and political institutions like the UN? This relates our discussion to a broader debate on structure and agency and the potential of subjects to transform prevailing frameworks in urban space.

All in all, it should be emphasized that the critical questioning of urban theory and the concept of the right to the city are necessary to comprehend the urban space we live in and the actors in it who struggle for the power to transform their environment. Marcuse’s questioning of whose right, to what city, and what right are practical tools as they provide a revolving door to both sides of the children’s right to the city.

In Turkey, as an extension of Habitat II, specific commitments regarding child welfare have succeeded. Within the framework of children’s right to the city, several local outcomes of global developments such as urbanization have been discussed, such as ethnic, cultural, social, and economic discrimination within the urban space. Still, as in other countries, street children are a well-known reality even if it is not possible to portray an exact picture of them as most do not have birth certificates or IDs. The main problems associated with the increasing number of street children in Turkey are poverty, internal migration from rural to urban and east to west, school dropout, lack of housing, urbanization, and neglect and domestic violence, but not family breakdown in comparison with other developing countries.

Street children in Turkey have a crucial, distinct feature from other countries as children working on the streets establish certain solidarity networks by attributing another meaning to the space that turns it into place. Therefore, rather than considering them as victims of poverty and family breakdown (as noted, family breakdown is not common among these children), they can be regarded as resourceful human beings. In some communities even, these children working or living on the streets are community leaders and gatekeepers. Such an approach to street children by considering them as resources and supporting the need for their participation is in line with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. While the abovementioned developments at the local and international level are promising, there is still a need for a strengths-based perspective which positions children as active agents making decisions about their own lives and the formation of urban space.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

F Kubra Aytac

Author biography

F Kubra Aytac has been working as a research assistant at the Social Sciences University of Ankara since April 2017. Currently, she is a PhD candidate in Psychology at the Middle East Technical University (METU). She holds two MS degrees: in Psychology (METU 2019) and in Sociology (METU 2018). Her master’s thesis in Sociology was awarded ‘Best Thesis of the Year’ by METU. Aytac graduated from the Sociology Department of METU with high academic distinction in 2015. Also, she holds a double major degree from METU in Philosophy (2016), and a minor degree in Political Science and Public Administration (2015). Her research interests include the sociology of childhood, co-parenting, marital relations, cultural life scripts, and personal life stories.

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