Street children and ‘protective agency’: Exploring young people’s involvement in organised crime in Dhaka,Bangladesh

Abstract

Children’s agency has dominated discourse about young people in recent years, yet little is known about street children’s agency in regard to involvement in organised crime, particularly in Bangladesh. Drawing on interviews with 22 street children, 80 interviews with criminal justice practitioners and 3 years of participant observation of the Bangladeshi criminal justice system, this article proposes that the concept of ‘protective agency’ is important for understanding how, and why, street children engage with Bangladeshi organised crime group: the mastaans.

Keywords

Agency Bangladesh organised crime protection street children

Introduction

Since 1989 and the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), young people¹ and their ‘social agency’ (Bordonaro and Payne, 2012) have dominated discourse (Honwana and De Boeck, 2005). This body of literature argues that young people are actively involved in shaping their own lives (Christiansen et al., 2006), and scholars note a major paradigm shift from viewing childhood through a sociological lens to a perspective often referred to as the ‘new social studies of childhood’. James et al. (1998) argue that children should be seen as ‘social actors’ (p. 207) and that the focus should be on their attributes now, rather than what they might become in the future (White and Choudhury, 2007). These developments have greatly improved young people’s opportunities for participation (Bordonaro and Payne, 2012). Agency, self-reflection and autonomy are now drivers for many social interventions designed for, and with, children (Bordonaro and Payne, 2012).

The UNCRC defines a child as anyone below the age of 18 years, and in many Western societies, childhood is associated with play, education and a lack of responsibility (Honwana, 2005). Yet, numerous studies from around the world highlight how children are often engaged in very ‘adult’ pursuits (Honwana, 2005). As Honwana and De Boeck (2005) point out, children ‘who do not readily fit within Western cultural fantasies of children as innocent and vulnerable, are quickly perceived as demonic, discontented and disorderly and are often feared and punished as a consequence’ (p. 3). This is particularly true when children engage in violence, war (Honwana and De Boeck, 2005) or organised crime, such as the case in this study.

To date, no study has considered the agency of children who engage in organised crime, particularly in Bangladesh. Little is known about the nature of children’s agency and the purpose of their engagement with organised crime groups. Many questions remain unanswered, such as the following: Why do children engage in organised crime? Is it right to see them as competent social actors, and if so, should we hold them accountable for their actions? Are they victims, offenders or both?

The article begins by deliberating current literature about street children² and agency. It discusses the methods used in this study and considers the nature of organised crime in Bangladesh and the involvement of street children in these groups. The article builds on current theories of agency but proposes the concept of ‘protective agency’ to help explain why children engage in organised crime. The article considers the culpability of children involved in Bangladeshi organised crime groups – the mastaans – and some of the ethical and moral debates raised by this study. I conclude by proposing that a nuanced understanding of agency is necessary to understand young people’s involvement in organised crime.

Children in Bangladesh

There are many challenges facing street children in Bangladesh: they live in abject poverty, experience abuse, exploitation and suffer from a multitude of health problems (United Nations Children’s Fund [UNICEF], 2009). The number of children who live on the streets in Dhaka – the country’s capital – is extensive, with some estimates being as high as 2 million (AusAID, 2005³).

Bangladesh ratified the UNCRC in 1990; however, according to UNICEF (2012), inadequate or unavailable protection services hamper its implementation. Thus, children face a lack of protection of their rights. Additionally, dissemination of the UNCRC is deficient and there is a lack of coordination between agencies, both of which are stumbling blocks to execution (Adolescent Development Foundation, 2008).

Organised crime in Dhaka

Very little has been written about organised crime in Bangladesh. However, crime in general is argued to be on the increase (Bangladesh Police, 2010). Political violence is rife among the two main political parties, the Awami League and the Bangladesh National Party, and corruption is widespread, particularly among government agencies (Lewis, 2012). Violence against women is one of biggest challenges facing the country, with up to 75% of females experiencing violence at some stage in their lives (Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, 2006). Furthermore, the World Bank (2007) argue that almost all inhabitants living in slums or on the streets face violence on a daily basis; in many instances, crime has become a routine part of life.

Shafi (2010) argues that organised crime is led by mastaans who manage illegal businesses that span the country and commit a multitude of crime and violence. Lewis (2012) proposes that in addition to partaking in criminal activities, mastaans also govern access to human services – such as electricity, gas and water – particularly in slum areas where communities struggle to access these amenities. Atkinson-Sheppard (2015) argues that street children are hired by mastaans to cause disturbance at political demonstrations, burn buses and throw bombs. Street children are also hired by mastaans to ‘grab land’ by occupying a piece of land to which they have no legal right. Young people, on the direct orders of mastaan bosses, literally occupy space in slums. They remain there until the landowner is forced to give up the land. Atkinson-Sheppard (2015) also argues that street children act as drug dealers for mastaan groups. Furthermore, street children are directed by mastaan groups to collect extortion money in slums (Atkinson-Sheppard, 2015), and perhaps most concerning is that these children are also hired to commit contract killings. This article considers the agency that children have when engaging in these types of crime. It focuses on the purpose of these children’s actions and the agency that children exhibit over their decision making.

Data and methods

The fieldwork for this study occurred in the following three phases:

Phase 1: Participant observation

I conducted a total of 3 years’ worth of participant observation, most of which occurred while I worked for an international development organisation in Dhaka which specialises in justice reform.

Phase 2: Interviews with adult practitioners

I carried out a total of 80 interviews (38 semi-structured and 42 unstructured) and two focus groups, the first with six participants and the second with five. The participants included police officers, prison officers, military security officers, paralegals, non-governmental organisation (NGO) workers, justice reform workers, journalists, diplomats and community members. The sample was ‘purposive’ (Berg, 2009). I chose participants because of their jobs or if I felt it were likely they would have some knowledge of street children or organised crime.

Phase 3: Observation and interviews with street children

A total of 22 children were involved in this study: 10 girls and 12 boys aged 8–15 years. All were associated with an organisation⁴ that provides holistic support to children who live on the streets. The children and the organisation were chosen for inclusion in this study because all of the young people had, at some stage, lived and worked on the streets and the number of children housed at the centre was relatively small; this allowed me ample time to get to know them and conduct a variety of engagement and research techniques.

Participant observation was carried out over 12 months, during which time I visited the organisation on a weekly basis. Throughout this period, I observed the children and their relationships with one another; I held parties and played games to build trust and rapport. I then carried out five 1-hour workshops which were designed to be interactive and a precursor to the formal interviews. Topics included the following: What is crime? The police; Young people and work; Drug and substance misuse and the United Kingdom, London and gangs. I then carried out eight semi-structured group interviews with the children which focused specifically on gangs and organised crime. Kyronlampi-Kylmanen and Kaarina (2011) argue that interviews are often ‘adult-centred’, but I avoided this pitfall by offering the children the option to be interviewed in small groups. All the children chose this option which gave them a sense of ownership over the process.

Organised crime and violence were key themes discussed within the interviews. However, the interview questions were focused on explaining types of behaviour as opposed to revealing details of offences (times, dates, places, etc.). I put a ‘no name’ policy in place; participants were asked not to name any associates who may have been involved in their previous offending or to reveal details of the offending of others. This resulted in discussions which focused more on the children’s perceptions of gangs and organised crime, rather than individual stories and lives.

I agreed a child safety policy with the director of the organisation. This policy stipulated that should any child disclose something which put themselves or someone else at risk, I would contact the director who would then be responsible for the child’s safety, and anyone else involved. An example was when the children discussed murder. I was acutely aware of the seriousness of this disclosure. Discussions around the subject demonstrated that the children knew a limited amount about contract killings. While I did not feel that this posed an imminent threat, I did believe it to be a challenging issue for the children to grapple with. For this reason, I passed on my concerns to the director who worked with other staff at the organisation to further explore this issue with the children.

I employed an interpreter to assist me during this research. This was necessary because the children spoke little English and I only have a basic grasp of Bengali. The role of the interpreter included translating the discussions I held with the children and acting as interpreter during the workshops and interviews. According to Temple (2002), there are two ways in which an interpreter can be used within research: ‘as a gatherer of facts or as an active producer of research’ (p. 845). This study favoured the latter approach; I ensured that my interpreter was engaged with the research process from start to finish. Temple (1997) argues that the researcher and the research are ‘one’ and should be viewed as such, but when a translator is involved, that person must be seen as intertwined with both the research process and its results. This standpoint was chosen to acknowledge how important an interpreter is to a research project and how essential they are in helping the researcher to fully understand the participants and the subject matter.

Informed consent was obtained from all the participants, including the children. The children’s living situation (they resided at the ‘organisation’ for the majority of the week) supported this process. I explained the scope of the research to the children and described how I would spend some time getting to know them, and if they were happy for me to do so, I would facilitate workshops and then interviews. They were all given an information sheet and a consent form (both translated into Bengali) before the onset of the observation. The children were asked to tick, as opposed to sign the consent form, and I described how they were free to terminate their involvement at any stage. Consent was discussed as the research progressed and again before the group work and interviews. The research included no formal mechanism to share the findings with the children; however, my interpreter continued to visit the centre on a regular basis and provided the children with regular updates on both the progress of the research and its dissemination.

All three phases of data collection were analysed and then considered in light of one another. This process encompassed theming and coding the data and conducting descriptive and then analytical analysis for each phase. I triangulated the data and compared all three data sets. This helped to identify similarities and inconsistencies among the data. My continual learning of Bangladeshi society and the criminal justice system guided the way I developed questions for the adult participants which in turn helped me to devise the research with the children, demonstrating the applicability of a case study approach to the study of children and organised crime.

Discussion

Scholars have demonstrated children’s ability to assert agency over their decision making and have ascribed them to be ‘active in the construction of their own lives, the lives of those around them and of the societies in which they live’ (James and Prout, 1990: 8). However, children’s agency is an abstract concept and the ability of children to choose their actions, and be aware of their choices, a complicated issue (Leonard, 2015). As Leonard (2015) writes, the problem is that scholars apply the term ‘agency’ too simplistically and miss the complex nature of children’s lives. Thus, children’s agency should be understood within the context of their relationships, to one another and adults, amid structural constraints and power structures (Leonard, 2015).

Agency is an important concept for street children discourse. Schernthaner (2011) argues that ‘despite their limited opportunities and marginalisation, young people on the streets still manage to assert agency over their own lives and develop complex coping strategies to sustain their livelihoods’ (p. 1). These children are ‘effective social actors’ (Awad, 2002: 112) who manage difficult situations with careful planning and decision making. Yet questions over what constitutes children’s agency remain and how street children exert their own agency is something which warrants further attention (Hecht, 1998). Things become more complicated when children’s agency moves away from discussions of survival into ‘ambiguous activities’ (Bordonaro and Payne, 2012), including violence or war. Bordonaro and Payne (2012) propose the notion of ‘ambiguous agency’ and question what agency means for child soldiers or children involved in conflict and in instances where ‘agency amongst children and youth is in stark contrast to established and normative conceptions about childhood and moral and social ideals about the kind of behaviour young people should demonstrate’ (p. 366). In many instances, children are encouraged to be social agents, to take responsibility for their lives, but only if they engage in positive activities, when they partake in crime, violence or war, their agency becomes more ambiguous (Bordonaro and Payne, 2012).

It is plausible that a child’s association with organised crime takes their behaviour into ‘ambiguous territory’, where childhood and adulthood are blurred and children commit often violent and criminal acts. Honwana (2005) argues that child soldiers occupy a somewhat ‘ambiguous state of being simultaneously children and soldiers’ (p. 44). She proposes that ‘tactical agency’ can help to explain the behaviour of children involved in combat. She describes the ways in which young people are coerced into conflict, yet maintain some sense of childhood and manipulate situations to gain respect, privileges or protection from their commanders. She argues that

Despite the fact that the majority of them [child soldiers] have been forced to enter the military, they are not empty vessels into whom violence is poured. Having started as victims, many of them are converted into the perpetrators of the most violent and atrocious deeds. In this transformation process they also exercise agency of their own – a ‘tactical agency’, an agency of the weak – which is sporadic, and mobile, and seizes every opportunity that allows them to cope with the constraints imposed upon them. (p. 50)

She goes further to argue that

By ‘tactical agency’, I mean a specific type of agency that is devised to cope with the concrete, immediate conditions of their lives in order to maximise the circumstances created by their military and violent environment. Their actions however, come from a position of weakness. They have no power base. (p. 49)

Honwana highlights how children can be both soldiers and children and demonstrates a way to understand children who commit violent acts. As Honwana argues, these children behave ‘tactically’ in order to manage precarious situations. Furthermore, positioning child soldiers as ‘tactical agents’ as opposed to senseless murderers or innocent victims portrays a more realistic view of their lives and enables an understanding of the actions they take from positions of vulnerability, in the context of war or conflict.

These discussions of agency are echoed in Klocker’s (2007) work that makes the distinction between thick and thin agency:

… ‘thin’ agency refers to decisions and everyday actions that are carried out within highly restrictive contexts, characterised by few viable alternatives. ‘Thick’ agency is having the latitude to act within a broad range of options. It is possible for a person’s agency to be ‘thickened’ or ‘thinned’ over time and space, and across their various relationships. (p. 85)

Klocker’s work demonstrates the nature of agency and how, and in what circumstances, it can change. However, defining what exactly is meant by ‘thick’ or ‘thin’ agency is difficult, and many questions remain unanswered about the purpose of children’s agency, something addressed by this study. Furthermore, as Hecht (1998) argues, the ways in which street children in Brazil perceive both ‘normal childhoods’ and ‘good’ and ‘bad’ behaviour are something entrenched in the understanding of their own worlds, not necessarily something aligned with Western thinking and ‘nurturing childhoods’. What is necessary for this debate is a nuanced understanding of the ways in which children perceive their own agency, within the context – and constraints – of organised crime.

Protective agency

The fieldwork data demonstrated endemic organised crime on the streets of Dhaka, led by mastaans. Both the children and adult participants described hierarchical groups of men who engage in organised crime. There was a general consensus that these groups operate in a specific framework: mastaans manage crime groups, often in alliance with politicians and the police; street gangs work for them and vulnerable street children operate as the labourers of these groups and are hired to conduct menial tasks. Protective agency is a notion which applies specifically to these children.

I propose that what these children want, and need, is protection and that their involvement with mastaans is primarily driven by their need to secure their own safety. Protective agency brings together ‘tactical’ (Honwana, 2005) and ‘thin’ (Klocker, 2007) agency but adds an additional component; it illustrates the purpose of the children’s actions: to secure protection. Street children actively engage in decision making on the streets and assess that alignment with a mastaan group is vital for their survival and social mobility. This is because these groups provide children with a way to earn money and secure protection.

Protective agency is important for two main reasons. First, the children in this study (and street children like them) are particularly vulnerable and thus in need of protection. They face abject poverty, difficulty accessing services and are acutely marginalised from society. In short, they lack protection. Second, mastaans play a specific role in the market for protection; they act as patrons and provide poor people with access to basic human services (Atkinson-Sheppard, 2015).

There are four main components to the notion of protective agency, all of which are associated with how the children understood the term ‘shelter’ (asraya), the word they used to describe protection. First, association with a mastaan group provides children with individual protection and support. Second, mastaan groups protect their members from the threat of rival groups. Third, they protect young people from criminal prosecution and assist their release from custody should they be arrested. Finally, association with mastaans ensures some level of social protection, which provides children with a way to earn money and have more autonomy over their lives. These discussions demonstrate that children exhibit ‘tactical agency’ (Honwana, 2005) over their decision to engage with a mastaan group, but the nature of this agency is weak (Honwana, 2005) or ‘thin’ (Klocker, 2007) because street children make decisions based not on rational motives but on their need to survive on the streets. Protective agency builds on these theories but provides a recognition of the purpose of children’s agency: to acquire protection.

Individual protection and support

Studies into gangs conclude that members support each other and perceive each other as family members (Scott, 1993). Analysis of the fieldwork data shows that older mastaan group members support younger members and group members perceive each other as family members, or brothers:

The younger children try to get shelter from the older children. If they face any kind of problem the older children help the younger ones, then in return the young children help the older children, for example they get tea or buy cigarettes for them. The younger children try to develop relationships with the older group members to make it feel like they are their elder brother, that’s why the children always try to be with the older boys.⁵

The relationships children form with mastaan group members is particularly important in defining whether they feel protected on the streets. As the quotation illustrates, a reciprocal relationship often develops; young children carry out tasks for older members, and in return they are provided with solidarity and support. The child participants explained that children do whatever they can to acquire protection, and in doing so they exhibit protective agency over their decision to engage with the gang.

Mastaan groups also protect members when a crime is committed:

The boss orders them to kill a person and so sends a group to do the crime. The group then goes and surrounds the victim, one person kills them but others are there to offer help and protection. One person does the crime but the other people are there to protect them.⁶

This demonstrates how groups work together, on the instruction of their boss: the young person who carries out the murder is protected by his fellow gang members; they are there to support him should something go wrong. The participants also described this as shelter, which illustrates how the term is used and interpreted in various ways to describe different forms of protection.

Protection from rival gangs

Research from across the world shows that young people often join gangs in order to be protected from other criminal groups (Decker and Van Winkle, 1996). This is also the case with mastaan groups as one young person explained:

They do it for the shelter.

Researcher:

What does shelter mean?

Shelter means I have to protect myself. If they [mastaans] find me alone anywhere they will beat me but if I have a group, then they will know not to hurt me. If they slap me I will complain to my boss and he will tell his boss and then the whole group will come and beat them.

Researcher:

So does shelter mean protection?

Yes, the main thing is protection.⁷

Survival is easier within a group as one participant explained further:

If a boy crosses the road and there are mastaans standing nearby they say to him, come here and they give him a slap. The boy won’t be able to say anything because he doesn’t have any power. But the boy will go to the seniors in his area and tell them that some boys slapped him. The older boys will then go and find the mastaans that hit the boy and ask them why they slapped him. This makes the boy want to join the group. He wants to be protected; he doesn’t want to be alone.⁸

The quotation illustrates how street children are recruited into mastaan groups because they want to acquire the protection that mastaans offer. Areas of Dhaka are controlled by different groups, and even if a young person is not a member of a mastaan group, they can still ask for protection should they face violence on the streets.

Protection from criminal justice

The fieldwork data demonstrated that mastaans often pay a proportion of their extortion money to the police, and in return they are given immunity. The children were aware of this nexus as one participant explained further:

They [mastaans] always have connections with the police. The boss gives money to the police. They say ‘don’t you ever touch our groups’. Okay, so they are taking a toll but they say to the police, ‘you don’t catch these people because they are my group members’. The boss’s main job is to handle the police and to make sure that the police supports their group.⁹

This explains the nature of the police-crime nexus. Mastaan groups need senior members to build strong relations with the police. To do so they provide corrupt officers with money, and in return group members are protected from legal prosecution. Perceptions of this protection are transferred to the streets and young people regard immunity as part of the spectrum of protection that mastaan groups control and supply.

Social protection and patronage

The last component of protective agency is related to how mastaan groups provide street children with patronage and protection. Patron–client relationships are an implicit part of life in Bangladesh, and almost everything is influenced by some type of patronage (Lewis, 2012). This spans all spheres, including politics, economics, religion and social relations (Lewis, 2012). In many instances, poor people need the support of a patron to access even the most basic human services (Lewis, 2012). This means that patronage and protection are closely interlinked and seeking protection is often the most important component of patron–client relationships (Lewis, 2012). Mastaans operate in a market for protection where they are the patrons and street children the clients. Mastaan groups provide street children with access to the labour market. They work for protection or, as the children termed it, ‘shelter’. As one individual said, ‘Yes, sometimes they work for money but most of the time they work for the shelter. They need help and they will do anything that they want to get it’.¹⁰ Protective agency is thus an essential component in understanding the complex relationship between street children and organised crime.

A paradigm in street children research highlights the importance of the relationships and connections these children make (Jones et al., 2008), and Aptekar (1988) argued that

… a key element determining how well they [street children] are able to make the adjustment to adulthood is their skill at making and taking advantage of ‘connections’ … what often determines whether or not someone will find work is what is known in Columbia as palanca – friends in powerful positions who can and will help the anonymous job-seeker to become someone, become ‘known’. (p. 79)

Dhaka’s palanca is ‘shelter’, but it operates in the same way; marginalised street children need the patronage of more influential members of society to help them survive, and one way of bringing street children into contact with powerful men is via a mastaan group. Associating with mastaans is thus one of the most important survival techniques for young people living on the streets, and these groups play a pivotal role in street children’s lives. One participant explained this relationship:

If I am poor then I cannot get all the facilities in society and this means that I have no motivation, no inspiration, no education. If I am this, what would be my mentality, my manner? But they can give me the shelter, the mastaans, they can get me the access.¹¹

Vulnerable children struggle to survive without association with a mastaan group; thus, their decision to engage with these groups is ‘tactical’ (Honwana, 2005). Agency can be ‘thickened or thinned’ (Klocker, 2007) based on the relationships children develop with influential people, including crime bosses. Having a well-established connection can ‘thicken’ a child’s agency and provide them with access to money and protection. On the flip side, a breakdown in relationships can make a child’s agency ‘thinner’ and leave them particularly vulnerable to exploitation and abuse on the streets.

Culpability, vulnerability and agency

These discussions highlight some difficult ethical and moral dilemmas. If we define children as agents responsible for their own actions (within the context of restricted and bounded lives), where does their culpability lie when they commit crime? Viewing the issue of children involved in organised crime through an ‘agency lens’ leads to an assumption that children should be held culpable for their acts, but this denies the realities of their lives and diminishes attention of their vulnerability (Tisdall and Punch, 2012). It also ignores the structural and cultural constraints that they face, their coercion into crime by the threat of violence and their need to survive.

The notion of ambiguous agency is worth returning to here. Bordonaro and Payne’s (2012) conceptualisation of youth’s involvement in conflict or violence as ambiguous makes a great deal of sense, when viewed from an outside perspective. But how do children perceive ‘ambiguous agency’? For the young people in this study, there was nothing ambiguous about involvement in organised crime; there was no consideration about whether committing violence equates to ‘normal’ childhood behaviour but rather a more nuanced understanding of the ways in which children must adapt to life on the streets. This relates closely to Hecht’s (1998) discussions of how street children perceive the normalcy of their lives and how they situate their perceptions within their own constructs of good and bad, ‘home life’ and ‘street life’. For the children in this study, engagement with mastaans resulted in social connections, money and, most importantly, protection. This combined with coercion into crime, meaning that there was nothing uncertain about it.

Children engage in crime because it offers them protective agency. The fact remains, however, that their jobs often involve committing dangerous and violent acts. How we conceptualise children’s involvement in crime determines the ways in which they are treated. For instance, if children are perceived as victims, we run the risk of disempowering them and making choices on their behalf rather than letting them decide their future (Ennew, 2003). On the other hand, seeing children as offenders (or agents) who are capable of making their own decisions and thus deserve punishment makes prison or punitive sentences the most obvious options (Wernham, 2004).

The current child soldier debate has many parallels with these discussions. Grossman (2007) argues that child soldiers are victims but are also ‘the perpetrators of atrocities’ (p. 2). Deciding on how to respond to these children is challenging. The trauma that children have experienced must be recognised along with the effects their behaviour may have had on others (Grossman, 2007). However, there is a general consensus that children under the age of 18 years should be treated as victims and rehabilitated rather than prosecuted (Bracken et al., 1996). This consensus is based on the moral understanding of children, their rights as juveniles and the effects that trauma may have had on their mental and physical well-being (Bracken et al., 1996). The same must also be considered for children involved in organised crime. These children should be viewed not only as active agents in their lives but also as victims of their circumstances. Thus rehabilitation and social integration rather than criminalisation should be prioritised. This is particularly significant in Bangladesh because there is no operating juvenile justice and children are often imprisoned with adult offenders (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit [GTZ], 2009).

Many scholars have questioned how to reintegrate street children into mainstream society. Hecht (1998) argues that there are very few examples of street children in Brazil who have made a ‘definitive departure from the streets’ (p. 183). He equates this with the appealing nature of the streets which ‘exerts an addicted, transformative power over their [street children’s] lives’ (p. 156). For Hecht (1998), children engage with the streets for a variety of reasons: autonomy, solidarity, as a way to avoid abuse at home and because in many ways they are better off – particularly in terms of income generation and access to food – than their counterparts in slums. This means that any intervention aimed at supporting street children must somehow address all of these issues, in an attempt to break the allure of street life (Hecht, 1998).

There is a wider issue to consider; if children engage in organised crime as a way to access patronage and protection, then can the same not be assumed of vulnerable adults? How viable is ‘protective agency’ for explaining adult involvement in organised crime, many of whom are acutely constrained by poverty, patronage, corruption and violence. These factors are particularly significant for vulnerable women and more data should be gathered to explore the relationship between mastaans and females. In addition, further studies should be conducted to see whether protective agency has wider value, for adults in Bangladesh and wider afield.

Conclusion

Street children in Dhaka are hired by mastaans to commit a wide range of criminal acts and are exploited in the process (Atkinson-Sheppard, 2015). Yet these children are not simply innocent, helpless victims, nor are they malicious criminals. They are social agents – doing what they can to survive on the streets. The notion of protective agency has been proposed in this article. It is a term which describes the reasons why street children engage with mastaan groups – as a way to acquire protection. Many scholars have argued that street children are actively engaged in the development of their own lives. This study has discovered that this is also the case for Bangladesh’s street children. But the reasons for their involvement in mastaan groups reside primarily in their need to secure their own safety.

There is a nuanced understanding of this type of agency which is specific to children. By this, I mean that the main component of this type of agency – protection – is something desired by children, something they as ‘beings’ need on a greater level than their adult counterparts, and this is what makes children’s involvement with mastaan groups gravely concerning. Children’s physical and emotional under-development and, for many, their lack of appropriate guardians make them particularly vulnerable to the advances of organised crime. While there is no doubt that childhood is a culturally constructed phenomenon, there does remain something special about the young people in this study, something which makes them particularly vulnerable and in need of protection. Thus, a nuanced understanding of these children’s culpability must be sought. By focusing on children as ‘beings’ rather than ‘becoming’ (Uprichard, 2008) in an effort to celebrate their agency, we acknowledge their ability to choose, to be individual actors, with views and rights of their own, separate from the adults in their lives. But the preoccupation with agency in many ways neutralises or down-plays the realities of children’s lives. What this study shows it that while children do exert agency over their decision to engage in mastaan groups, they do so because they need protection, a natural human desire and something particularly pertinent to children. All of which helps us to grasp the meaning of their involvement in organised crime, to see children’s participation in mastaan groups as they see it themselves – a mechanism to secure protection, essential for their survival on the streets.

Footnotes

Funding

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

Notes

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