Asymmetrical Interactions: Social Reality and State Control of Street Children in Germany

For fifteen years, Germany has been witness to a heated discussion about the social phenomenon of street kids. Frequently, the social actors are described either as “endangered youth,” corresponding to a discourse of victimization, or alternatively as “dangerous youth” in a discourse which tends to criminalize them. This contribution attempts to grasp the social phenomenon of street kids on the basis of participatory observations drawn from six years of field research which focused on the interaction between youth and institutions representing state authority. The ethnographic approach makes it clear that the social reality of the specific Lebenswelt represented by the “street” is generated in processes of asymmetric interaction.