There is a quiet power in language — a stealthy force that can humanise or erase, uplift or condemn, draw people in or cast them out. One of the most dangerous things we do, often without realising, is other. It is a mechanism that allows us to create distance between ourselves and those whose lives or suffering challenge our sense of comfort or complicity.
Theories of othering remind us that naming is never neutral. Edward Said’s (1978) work on Orientalism revealed how language has historically been used to draw sharp lines between “us” and “them” — the civilised and the barbaric, the innocent and the dangerous. Othering allows us to live with injustice because it locates the problem in the person, the title we've given them, and not in the structures that create or sustain their suffering.
Anthropologist Mary Douglas (1966) also offers us a crucial lens: her notion of “matter out of place” helps explain why societies react so strongly to what — or who — does not fit their expected order. Dirt, she argues, is not a substance but a judgement. Something becomes “dirty” only when it is seen to be in the wrong place. Street-connected children, in many societies, are treated as such — not because they are inherently threatening or disruptive, but because their visible presence in public spaces challenges deeply ingrained beliefs about where children belong. They are children out of place— and so, society labels them with words that remove them, degrade them, or re-categorise them entirely.
The different names given to street-connected children around the world reveal more than linguistic variation. They reveal judgement. They show how society chooses to see — or not see — these children.
In India, the term Sadak Chap translates loosely to ‘without root or roof’ or ‘carrying the stamp of the street’ (Patel, 1990: 10). It brands the child with the mark of the street, making their identity inseparable from their struggle.
In Brazil, the word Moleque historically held two meanings. One: "an individual with no word of honour, a bastard, rogue, knave, young boy.” The other: “a younger child (up to 21 years of age) of a slave” (Rosenberg & Andrade, 1999: 115). Both meanings tell us that this child is already coded with mischief, with subservience, with low status — language that carries the weight of Brazil’s racial and colonial history.
In Kenya, street-connected children are called chokrra — a derogatory term meaning both ‘to pick’ and a ‘kitchen’ or ‘odd-job’ boy (Johnson, 1939, cited in Davies, 2008: 314). The child becomes a scavenger, a helper without future or name, existing only to serve.
In Egypt, language carries a layered and politically charged history. The term awlaad elshaware’e was once used during the 1910s to describe lower-class revolutionaries seen as troublemakers during nationalist uprisings against British rule. In more recent times, a more dehumanising term has emerged: soos (plural for sousa), meaning small insects that destroy grains and crops. According to Hussein’s respondents, soos are “children, boys or girls, who live in the street with minimal or mostly no contact with their parents or guardians, who depend entirely on the street for shelter without protection or guidance from any governmental or non-governmental associations, and who have developed and relatively adhere to certain skills and values that enable them to deal with street life” (Hussein, 2003: 8–9).
Lalor (1999: 765) gives further examples of police slang: in Colombia, street children are known as the plague or dirty faces; in Ethiopia, they are vermin; in Cameroon, they are mosquitoes. Each of these terms strips away personhood and replaces it with something that can — or even should — be eradicated.
Even the English term street child, while more palatable, is not neutral. It has been a remarkably effective term for NGO fundraising — precisely because it stirs discomfort in the Western psyche. Nieuwenhuys (2001: 551) argues that “the term... represents both the violation of the sanctity of childhood and the need for moral reform,” while Hecht (1998: 113) notes how its resonance lies more with Western ideals of innocence lost than with children’s lived realities. The phrase works because it offends Western sensibilities of what childhood should be — not because it centres the child.
More recent research continues to highlight how language shapes the lives of street-connected children globally. A 2023 study from Nigeria reveals that children often assign themselves nicknames as a form of survival and resistance — a strategy to build resilience, navigate danger, and claim agency within hostile environments (Akinwale et al., 2023). These names are not given by society, but chosen — a small act of power in a world that offers them so little.
The Consortium for Street Children (CSC) now advocates for the use of the term street-connected children rather than street children, in an effort to reduce stigma and broaden understanding. It includes children who live on the streets, work on the streets, or maintain relationships with the streets as a key part of their survival. In some regions, particularly in Anglophone Africa, the term streetism is also used, further illustrating how global language continues to evolve — often problematically (Consortium for Street Children, 2024).
In Vietnam, they are known as bui doi — the dust of life (Noble, 1994). A phrase so hauntingly poetic it almost disguises its cruelty. To call a child dust is to make them weightless, disposable, invisible. But these are children who carry the burden of survival, often alone.
Language is not just a mirror of our beliefs. It shapes them. When a child is named as dust, a pest, or a rogue, what room is left for compassion? For protection? For rights?
This is why we must pay attention to how we speak — and how we listen. Othering makes it easier to look away. It makes it possible for children to disappear not only from the street, but from policy agendas, from public empathy, from the imagination of what could be otherwise.
But it doesn’t have to be this way.
We can choose to name differently. We can name with care, with precision, with dignity. This post is not just a list of harmful words — it is a call to notice. If you know the terms used for street-connected children in your country, please share them in the comments. Not to amplify harm, but to expose it. To ask: what does this say about us? And perhaps more importantly: what could it say, if we dared to name differently?
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References
Akinwale, A.A., Ayangunna, J.A., & Ayandele, A. (2023). Nicknames and Resilience among Street Children in Southwestern Nigeria. Languages, 9(8), 277. https://www.mdpi.com/2226-471X/9/8/277
Consortium for Street Children. (2024). About Street Children. https://www.streetchildren.org/about-street-children
Davies, M. (2008). A Childish Culture? Shared Understandings, Agency and Intervention: An Anthropological Study of Street Children in Northwest Kenya. Childhood, 15(3), 309–330.
Douglas, M. (1966). Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. Routledge.
Hecht, T. (1998). At Home in the Street: Street Children of Northeast Brazil. Cambridge University Press.
Hussein, S. (2003). Children in the Street: The Cairo Case. Cairo: Save the Children.
Johnson, M. (1939). Cited in Davies, M. (2008).
Lalor, K. (1999). Street children: A comparative perspective. Child Abuse & Neglect, 23(8), 759–770.
Nieuwenhuys, O. (2001). By the sweat of their brow? Street children, NGOs and children’s rights in Addis Ababa. Africa, 71(4), 539–557.
Noble, C. (1994). Street Children in Vietnam: Interactions of Old and New. Vietnam’s Children, UNICEF.
Patel, S. (1990). Street children, hotel boys and children of pavement dwellers and construction workers in Bombay: How they meet their daily needs. Environment and Urbanization, 2(2), 9–26.
Rosenberg, M. & Andrade, F. (1999). Understanding the Streets: An Ethnographic Study of Street Children in Rio de Janeiro. Childhood, 6(1), 109–124.
Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. Vintage Books.
