Street children and their activity spaces in Kolkata: A geographical appraisal

Street children related with the urban spaces in the developing world represent a sad outcome of the rapid urbanization process. These children have to cope with the new situation every day. They adopt or develop many complex livelihood strategies and a variety of different informal or even illegal activities in public space and form supportive social networks in order to survive in street life with family or without family. Street children use the different suitable urban spaces as their earning, living, entertaining spot. The livelihoods of young people on the street should be analyzed in relation to the spaces they use based on their age and length of stay on the streets i.e. the activity space. An activity is generally characterized as a geographic extent in which people move in the course of their daily activities. It is related with space and time. The present study is an analysis of the routine or daily life on chosen locations (activity spaces) of urban street children, i.e. their spatial lives and their working strategies. The overall aim of this study is to describe the activity spaces of the sampled street children.