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Article: Public perceptions of, and reactions to, street children.
- Article from:
- Adolescence
- Article date:
- December 22, 1998
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 Libra Publishers, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Street children are part of the modern urban scene. Baizerman (1990) maintains that there are social and institutional factors that serve to sustain their presence. The issue of prevalence, too, is a crucial one. Community groups and researchers differ widely in their estimates of the number of street children. According to Baizerman (1988), "the politics of numbers can hide or distort the moral issue . . . and street kids, both as people and as a symbol, may be used to mediate actual and symbolic relations between different social, ethnic, racial, and income groups" (p. 14).
Baizerman (1990) states that "street kids are part of the background of city life for ...