Surviving on the Streets of Java: Homeless Children's Narratives of Violence

Abstract

This article examines narratives of personal experience from homeless street youths in urban Indonesia. Following current research on narrative and victimization, the author identifies the processes of identity production required for survival in a world of rejection, deprivation and violence. The article also demonstrates how the children's repertoire of subject positions is constructed in relation to the power structures of the streets through which violence can be conditionally interpreted along a scale of acceptability. These life stories present us with a practice for constructing the self beyond that of agent or victim and without the sense of trauma mainstream adults associate with sexual abuse and violence. The stories also present scholars and outreach workers with an intimate glimpse of the street child's cognitive strategies for survival.