Moradores de mugorodes: um estudo sobre organização social entre os chamados meninos de rua da Cidade de Maputo

Abstract

The present work analyzes the social organization of Mugorodes residents commonly called of street children. Literature analyzes the issue of so-called street children from two main lines of approach. The first one focuses on the reasons that take the boys to the streets, and the second focuses on the survival strategies adopted by these boys. These studies assume that street children live in an unstructured way, since they stopped living with their biological families. These studies make it possible to understand some of the causes that take the boys to the streets and some of the survival strategies for them adopted, but it remains to understand the forms of social organization adopted by that social group. Through an ethnographic exercise carried out in the lower part of the city of Maputo with a group of called street boys, I realized that they are organized in units that they call Mugorodes and that constitute their homes, which allows me to distance myself from the studies they consider that the fact that boys stop living with their families puts them in the position of being devoid of social organization and therefore are unstructured. (TRADUÇÃO NOSSA)