Negotiating social identities: the influence of gender, age and ethnicity on young people’s ‘Street Careers’ in Tanzania

This paper explores the diverse ways that children and young people negotiate their social identities and construct their life course trajectories on the street, based on ethnographic research with street children in Tanzania. Drawing on the concept of a ‘street career’, I show how differences of age, gender and ethnicity intersect with the time spent on the street, to influence young people’s livelihood strategies, use of public space, access to services, and adherence to cultural rites of passage. Using the notion of ‘gender performativity’, I analyse how young people actively reconfigure gender norms and the concept of ‘the family’ on the street. Introduction There has been a paradigm shift in the literature on street children since the 1970s, directing attention towards the influence of ‘time’ and ‘place’ in children’s experiences on the street (Ennew & Swart-Kruger, 2003). Recent studies have presented the street as a ‘place on the margins’ that offers children ‘the space and