Dissertation Research: Leaving Home: Children

这项提案将审查农村儿童如何独自移民到城市，并扩大坦桑尼亚城市街头儿童的队伍；这些儿童离开学校，在城市的非正规部门工作，制定新的生存战略。人类学文献中关于儿童移民的信息很少，对这一现象的了解也很少。提交人指出，必须区分打工的街头儿童和乞讨或离家出走的儿童。该项目将阐明非洲非正规经济、儿童移徙进程(和决策)以及亲属关系/社区在儿童移徙情况中的作用。此前的研究表明，“子女致富”是坦桑尼亚家庭和儿童寄养家庭普遍存在的重要理想。独生子女移民的增加似乎与人们对这些社会的社会组织的理解相矛盾。方法包括对200名供应商的调查、结构化访谈和在城市和农村社区的参与者观察。

This proposal will examine how rural children are migrating to cities alone and swelling the ranks of urban street children in Tanzania; these children leave school and take up informal sector work in the city, developing new survival strategies. There is little information on child migrants in the anthropological literature and this phenomenon is poorly understood. The author notes that it is important to differentiate between working street children and those who beg or who are runaways. This project would shed light on the African informal economy, on the process of child migration (and decision-making) and on the role of kinship/community in the child migration situation. Previous studies have indicated that "wealth in children" is an important ideal among Tanzanian families and child fosterage common. The increase in lone child migration appears to contradict what has been understood about the social organization of these societies. Methods include a survey of 200 vendors, structured interviews and participant observation in both urban and rural communities.