Abstract
Kristina Gibson’s book, Street Kids, is a passionate glimpse into the lives of New York street youth. Adopting a critical feminist ethnographic approach, the study involved a total of five years of field-work (the summer of 2004 to the summer of 2006 and then return visits from 2007 to 2010), much of which was done when the author worked as a volunteer street outreach worker. Theoretically, the analysis is primarily framed by human geography, but the book is interspersed throughout with sociological insights.
After setting the stage in the first chapter, where a series of questions were posed that were effectively addressed throughout the book—a feat unfortunately neglected in some scholarly books—Chapter Two provides the reader with an excellent review of the three main paradigms that have framed youth homelessness, beginning not long after the Civil War. What impressed me most about this part of the analysis was how the history and ideologies about street youth were shown to inform the development of professionalized social services. From the child savers, to mainstream studies of delinquency and subcultures, to the current era where the processes and contextual experiences of street youth are explored, the chapter does a nice job reviewing key materials in each era, in addition to making the important point that social services tend to lag behind social change and the needs of street youth. The material in this chapter would be useful reading for those interested in shifting paradigms about who street youth are, and why they end up roaming our streets.
The ethnography begins, in earnest, in Chapter Three where the life of “Blacc,” a street kid from Queens, is profiled. This case study is used to illustrate the common trajectories that lead many young people to take to the streets, including: childhood poverty, foster care, and a non-heterosexual orientation. Moreover, Blacc’s case study revealed the many challenges that confront youth once they become seriously street-involved, including: making money in the illegal street economy (e.g., bending Metro cards for subway patrons and sex work), alcohol and drug use, police harassment, and discrimination.
From here the analysis turns to the practice of “outreach” where social service providers reach out and “engage” street-involved youth. Along with a discussion about the history, philosophy, and practicalities involved in outreach, Goffman’s work on performance is used to show the reader how outreach workers learn to establish credible identities with various street audiences, ranging from drug dealers to the police. This work was shown to be emotionally draining, not very well paid, with high levels of worker turnover.
A little more than halfway through the book, Gibson examines changes that have taken place in policing homeless people in New York City. After reviewing the well-known and controversial practice of zero-tolerance policing that began in the mid-1990s, the author argues that this style of law enforcement has negatively affected the lives of street youth by altering their patterns of mobility. Street youth now need to be constantly on the move in order to avoid getting ticketed or arrested by the police. According to Gibson, this has made it much more difficult for outreach workers to locate and help homeless youth because they are now constantly on the run. Not only are youth more on the move that in the past, but this “hyper-mobility” has pushed street youth away from busy public spaces which used to be used for money-making and leisure to more secluded and dangerous areas of the city. This was the most interesting yet disturbing finding of the study.
Apparently these mobility patterns had noticeably changed between the author’s first two years of field work—ending in the summer of 2006—and her final observations which were made in 2010. Since disorder-policing has been in existence since the mid-1990s, it would have been interesting to know if such policing has intensified over the past 15 years, thus explaining the differences she observed in youths’ mobility patterns over this relatively short period of field work. Annual data from 2004 to 2010 on how many tickets have been issued to youth by New York’s Finest would have helped to explain these mobility shifts. Indeed, such activity has taken place in other North American cities over this same period. For example, in Toronto, Canada the number of tickets that have been issued by the Toronto Police Service for violations related to panhandling and squeegee cleaning have increased by over 2,000 percent over the past decade. Unfortunately, similar sorts of statistics were not presented in this study.
Even though the analysis was couched within a feminist standpoint, most of the book focused on the lives of male street youth. This may simply reflect the fact that males outnumber females on the streets and that their presence may be more visible to outreach workers. Yet there was not much discussion about whether changes in youths’ mobility patterns were gendered. Since the streets are predominantly male-dominated spaces, are these new mobility patterns experienced in the same ways for homeless young women as they are for homeless young men? Unfortunately the reader was not provided with an answer to this question, but it would be an ideal question for future research.
In sum, this well-written book should be required reading for street outreach workers, and is highly recommended for academics and budding ethnographers who are interested in the study of youth homelessness.