The General Comment on Children in Street Situations: Insights into the Institutionalisation of Children’s Rights

Abstract

The drafting of the General Comment ( GC ) on Children in Street Situations ( UNCRC , 2016), whereby the sociological perspective (Lucchini, 1993, 1996, 2007; Stoecklin, 2000a, 2007) that informed this labelling becomes lost in translation, provides a convincing example of the ‘paradox of institutionalisation’ (Stammers, 2013). The vision of children’s “living rights” as the outcome of a structured process translating specific claims into an institutionalised set of norms (Hanson and Nieuwenhuys, 2013) is thus specified. Analysis of the labels used for “street children” underlines the transformability of signification, domination and legitimisation in the theory of structuration (Giddens, 1979, 1984).