Introduction

Chapter 1 includes a description of the challenges faced by street-involved youth and the context in which they live, and it introduces the idea that street-involved youth experience a unique type of emerging adulthood. These youth are adult-like at an age when education, work, and services assume that they should be dependent and so adult services are denied them because they are too young. Teenagers who successfully live independently and who do not or cannot return to families are a challenge for current social policy and practices. The consequence is that these emerging adults who are street-involved struggle longer than necessary, and this struggle exemplifies the instability and precariousness of late-modern emerging adulthood.

Identity

Chapter 8 describes how identity exploration and “enduring choices” are more difficult for street-involved youth, in part because they do not receive much help from familial and societal institutions. Identity exploration is in large part the experience of disengagement from street life and engagement with something else. This process is interpretable as a change in worldview, from a reactive need for independence and self-determination, away from “not being who I want to be,” and toward a greater focus or need for meaningfulness, security, and support that comes with interdependence with others. This process was the mirror image of what these youth experienced during their separation from parents and guardians, a time when individuating themselves from their family was important. Identity achievement is a challenge for all youth, and it is an acute problem for street-involved youth who are not situated in social and structural locations where adult identities are easily accessible.

Street-Involved Youth Talk

Chapter 2 describes the Risky Business study, which is the source of the primary data for this book, including an overview of the street-involved youth sample. This study was a panel study, with five waves of data collected over roughly 10 years. More than 200 youth in Victoria, British Columbia, between the ages of 14 and 18 were recruited, and by the fifth wave, 64 young people were still street-involved. Of these, 22 identified as Indigenous and 38 as women. Eight had been in permanent foster care, and another 24 had some experience in foster care. The mean age of independence from guardian was 14.7 years. Almost all had some early-life experience with trauma and long periods of familial instability. Being on the street was widely perceived as an improvement in life circumstances, and most youth reported surprisingly high levels of hopefulness and peer support.

NFA (No Fixed Address)

In Chapter 7, street-involved youth are expressing a desire for what other young adults want, that is, to accept responsibility for themselves, to make independent decisions, and to be financially independent. As Arnett found, this is what young adulthood looks like to most young people. Street-involved youth described it as the experience of being in-between, and feeling in-between childhood and adulthood is developmentally and existentially in part the search for and trying out of ways of finding meaning. Past experience with trauma and current financial difficulties contributed to their experience of feeling in-between.

Contribution and Complications of Instability in the Lives of Street-Involved Youth

Unlike most emerging adults, for whom instability is new, for street-involved youth instability is a lifelong experience, beginning in early childhood. Chapter 3 portrays the experience of frequent changes in housing, frequent fluctuations in guardian arrangements, and adjustments related to parental mental health, addiction, and abuse and neglect. As a result of these unique circumstances, street-involved youth often embrace change and assume responsibility for themselves in the midst of instability. At the same time, persistent instability interferes with attachment to work and to education.

Self-Focus

In Chapter 5, the early months and years in the lives of street-involved youth are examined in light of Arnett’s suggestion that emerging adults’ self-focus is associated with less influence by social institutions, including family, education, and the job market and employment. In the absence of daily life with family, attending school, and working a straight job, street-involved youth’s preoccupations were often centered on creating a “fresh start” and learning to cope with the hardships of street life, the highs and lows of using drugs, and informal and experiential learning about everyday life.

Possibilities

Chapter 6 describes the desire for further change shown by the street-involved youth as they grew older and more mature. They were responding to recognition that their friendships need to change if their life is to change; boredom and wanting something more meaningful; unhappiness with their own drug use; weariness with being financially vulnerable; being frightened about the direction of their lives; a desire to be better than their parents; responsibilities to others, including a partner or a child; and utopian aspirations. The chapter also presents the experiences of some youth who had hopes but, at the time of the authors’ final meeting with them, were discouraged and had absorbed the street identity into their long-term idea about who they were.

Implications for Policy and Practice

Chapter 9 illustrates the circumstances of the authors’ street-involved youth sample at the time of the last data collection point, further implications of early life trauma, and the unfairness of social policy, with suggestions for helping street-involved youth reintegrate into mainstream social institutions more easily. The youth at this point in their lives were either stable and engaged, stable and unengaged, unstable and engaged, or unstable and unengaged. Only youth in the last category were truly in difficulty, but youth in the other three categories were often left out of supports that other young people take for granted. This points to the mismatch between age and social structure, and in part this is a consequence of education, work, and social services not being responsive to their life circumstances or focused on short-term goals rather than inclusion.

Self-Focus

In Chapter 4, accounts of street-involved youth about their separation from guardians are described. These stories show that how and why these youth separate or are separated from guardians affect their unusual experiences of self-focus, emerging adulthood, and experiences on the street. The youth’s explanations for leaving guardians included the desire to grow up, the need to escape intolerable conditions at home, and the urge for freedom. On the other hand, much like other emerging adults, in this period street-involved youth were “freed” of the routines of school and family life.