What does it mean to be a child or an adolescent growing up on the streets or in a state institution? How do children define their everyday lives in the midst of global processes? This ethnographic study situates childhood and adolescence as social forms in the complex urban world of Caracas, Venezuela.
"Centering on a series of dramatic life histories and interviews in which the street children provide stunningly insightful and poetically expressed analyses of their own situations, Márquez's book is compellingly written and excellently thought out, makes theoretical contributions, and portrays a fascinating situation with insights that will be useful to scholars in a variety of fields."