Placing the vulnerable subject: re-theorizing Peruvian street children’s lives through an ethic of care

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article examines the lives of Peruvian street children as a lens to more critically think about ideas of agency, vulnerability and care. Building on more than 14 months of fieldwork with street children in Lima and Cusco, the lives of children in this study reveal street children as vulnerable subjects, able to act in the context of their particular dependencies. Applying a feminist ethic of care to an analysis of children’s lives challenges some of the assumed tensions between vulnerability and agency. Instead, it points to a need to consider agency as the cultivation of interdependencies, in the context of specific socio-spatial relationships. The article shows how many actions are contradictory and may simultaneously create more opportunities for children while furthering their marginalization in other ways. Similarly, caring relationships can both facilitate and limit young people’s opportunities.