Are street children juvenile migrants? Discoveries from their earning, spending and saving practices (Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso)

In Ouagadougou, capital of Burkina Faso, the so-called street children and youth I worked with usually preferred to describe themselves as juvenile migrants, 'searching money' in order to support themselves and their family and, some day, build their own future. Could they indeed be considered as participating to a form of juvenile migration? I addressed this hypothesis as an anthropologist by looking empirically at their economic practices. The analysis of the daily budget of dozens of bakoroman revealed that their desire to appear as providers for their family was not simply delusional: it materialised in routine saving practices and remittances to their family. But these practices varied significantly from one group and from one individual to another. These variations revealed that they navigated between norms of juvenile labour migration, which entailed redistribution to kin, and that of a deviant street ethos, which is based on a rugged individualism.