Children In Street Work

How Latinx kids and their undocumented parents struggle in the informal street food economy Street food markets have become wildly popular in Los Angeles—and behind the scenes, Latinx children have been instrumental in making these small informal businesses grow. In Kids at Work, Emir Estrada shines a light on the surprising labor of these young workers, providing the first ethnography on the participation of Latinx children in street vending. Drawing on dozens of interviews with children and their undocumented parents, as well as three years spent on the streets shadowing families at work, Estrada brings attention to the unique set of hardships Latinx youth experience in this occupation. She also highlights how these hardships can serve to cement family bonds, develop empathy towards parents, encourage hard work, and support children—and their parents—in their efforts to make a living together in the United States. Kids at Work provides a compassionate, up-close portrait of Latinx children, detailing the complexities and nuances of family relations when children help generate income for the household as they peddle the streets of LA alongside their immigrant parents.

This book deals with street children who live in the developing world, and homeless youth who are from the developed world. They are referred to as children in street situations (CSS) to show that the problem is both in the children and in the situation they face. The book examines several aspects of the children and their street situations, including the families of origin and the homes they leave, the children’s social life, and mental health. Other aspects are the problems of published demographics, the construction of public opinion about these children and the, often violent, reactions from authorities. The book then discusses current research on children in street situations, as well as programs and policies. The book ends with recommendations about programs, policies and research.

Excerpt from Children in Street Work A possible further reason why street work as a form of child labor has received comparatively tardy recognition is that the average citizen sees the child engaged in his work and unconsciously assumes therefore that he knows all about it. The problem of Street work and the street worker, like all social problems, involves many and various factors, however, not apparent to the casual observer. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.