@inbook{7d5ca2ddd76049679c2e0f12d51d0b8e,
title = "Political Practices in African Cities: The Future for Street-Living Youth",
abstract = "Street settings act to constrain formal political engagement but can enable activist citizen forms of political participation. Drawing on data from Growing Up on the Streets, a longitudinal research project conducted with and by street youth in Accra (Ghana), Harare (Zimbabwe) and Bukavu (Democratic Republic of the Congo), this chapter focuses on street youth{\textquoteright}s engagement with different forms of activist political practices, as typologies of street citizenship. Conceptualizing street citizenship as against, hidden and with formal and informal institutional structures, we define the spaces in which the political practice of street citizenship occurs as defiant, created and shared, with a typology of political practice which is rebellious, resistant and collaborating. Excluded from formal institutional structures and political processes, street youth participate in forms of activist street citizenship that enable them to begin to reimagine ways of engaging with political practice and shaping a future for themselves.",
keywords = "street youth, street citizenship, activism, political participation",
author = "Kate Sargent and Janine Hunter and Roberta Dumitriu and \{van Blerk\}, Lorraine",
note = "{\textcopyright} 2026 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston, Genthiner Stra{\ss}e 13, 10785 Berlin",
year = "2025",
month = dec,
day = "15",
doi = "10.1515/9783111215105-034",
language = "English",
isbn = "9783111214603",
series = "De Gruyter Contemporary Social Sciences Handbooks",
publisher = "De Gruyter",
editor = "Cihan Erdal and Jacqueline Kennelly",
booktitle = "De Gruyter Handbook of Youth Activism",
}