Children's Street Work in Urban Nigeria as Adaptation and Maladaptation to Changing Socioeconomic Circumstances

Abstract

One fundamental value of the modern societies in which schools endogenously emerged is self-orientation. This contrasts with the familistic collectivism that has been identified as providing a basis for the social structure of traditional societies such as Nigeria. An important strategy of child socialisation in Nigeria and other West African countries is responsibility training. One of the objectives of the investigations reported in this article was to determine the extent to which an aspect of responsibility training, namely children's street-trading activities, typifies a collective orientation and the extent to which it was consonant with schooling, which largely promotes a self-orientation. The data consist of interviews with: (1) 2000 children from different parts of Nigeria, both traders and nontraders; (2) 100 of the children's teachers; (3) 224 women traders; and (4) 117 experts (such as doctors, social welfare officers, policemen, and religious leaders) who, in their professional roles, interact with young street traders. It is concluded that: (1) street trading had some value-compatibility with schooling in the early stages of the modernisation process in Nigeria, but that it has become maladaptive as a result of both changes in the conditions of trading and changes in the system of school assessment; and (2) early childhood working experience, as exemplified in street trading, may constitute one of the important mechanisms by which the traditional value of familistic collectivism is maintained and the self-orientation inculcated by prolonged schooling is reduced.