A little but enough: Street children’s subcultures in Yogyakarta, Indonesia

Summary

This thesis is an examination of how street children in Indonesia are living on the edge of society and face multiple forms of social and spatial exclusion in their everyday lives. Homeless street children have often experienced alienation from their homes and families, and discrimination when working on the streets. In Indonesia they are perceived to be ‘out of place’, and to be committing a social violation by transgressing that which is considered to be appropriate behaviour. Consequently, they are stigmatised through a discourse of deviance, and physically removed from public spaces by state ‘cleansing’ operations which involve arrests, imprisonment and, in some cases, torture.