Los chicos de la Cañada. Llegar, vivir y salir de la calle. Formas de integracion y produccion de sentido de un grupo de niños y adolescentes en situacion de calle en el Conurbano Bonaerense.

This dissertation seeks to understand the experiences and points of view of the children who live on the treets, focusing on the circumstances and reasons that lead them to the streets and the ways in which they live. The material analyzed in it is the product of an ethnographic research carried out with a group of children who live on the streets of a city of the Great Buenos Aires. First, the dissertation analyzes their social backgrounds, the characteristics of their families and their personal interpretations about the reasons for ending up on the streets. Second, it explores their ways of being and living on the street: their peer relationships, the things they do, say, fell and think. Finally, it examines their relationships with the state programs and social workers that intervene in their situation. The results enable to know the children’s social conditions of existence and the ways in which they participate in the elaboration of those conditions. In particular, they permit to reflect on three relations: between their social integration and their ways of meaning production, between their social memberships and the ways in which they build their identity and personal dignity, between the unstable and unprotected conditions in which they live and the risks they have to assume. Finally, they enable to give an account of the functions and challenges faced by the social policies focused on them.