Street Hustling

1. SECOND TERM
Typologies and differences: Street Hustling
Feb 6,2023
Lecture 15: ( Chap 5, Offended and Offending, L.Visano
Book- )
Course director: Dr.Negar Alamdar

2. Some Important questions to Consider:
 Why do we have street youth?
 Is it just deviant kids who do not want to listen? Is it children that are
abused?
 Are they lacking opportunities?
 How are street youth linked to capitalism? Are they obeying
capitalism or disobeying it?
 What are your thoughts on street youth?
 What can be done, if anything, to assist street youth?
 Some people say that street youth are those that simply could not
conform to societal norms. What do you think of this?
 What do you think of prostitution? Is there something inherently
wrong with it or is it cultural production dictating for us what is right
and what is wrong?
 What about drugs, since it is a choice, is there something wrong
with drug use?

3. Street hustle defined as:
 someone who works hard for their money but has to do it illegally
on the streets.
 Understanding the street as a place of practice- how does time
articulate itself in this space?
 Social space is socially constructed and used to ensure the
survival of capitalism, thus the streets is the ultimate locus of
struggle
 The street activates class divisions through class-based codes of
conduct
 The awareness of being different and seeing differences inspires
maneuvers that challenge moral authority
 The street renders street lives inappropriate; various street
experiences , from the hustlers works on the streets, to others, all
is regulated.

4. The Street Hustle: Survival as Resistance
 An ideology of individualism pervades street relations.
Newcomers learn that one always looks out for themselves.
 Beyond the need for money as survival, it is also viewed as
power and positive reward and is seen as a justification for
action.
 Fast money assumes great significance. The immediate
benefits associated with money such as partying, drugs,
alcohol are supplemented by its function in determining
friendship patterns, status and respect
 One Must be street smart. A smart hustler presents themselves
as a tough minded opportunist who lives by wits and avoids
the humiliation of a regular job.

5. Cont.,
 People on the street are expected to present a cool
orientation and a presentist attitude which is a form of
immediate gratification.
 Presentism Is defined as the lack of perseverance in the
pursuit of long term projects, a lack of persistence and the
extremely limited temporal horizons of delinquents
 2 factors seen as the root of delinquency:
lack of parental discipline, and
repeated failures.
 Violence involved in cool techniques
 fighting seen as a legitimate way to solves problems.

6.  Games also involved in street life where hustling
provides both money and entertainment . Games allow
kids to defend themselves from others by allowing for
tricks and masks. Kids may play games with cops by
pretending to be victims of adult crimes
 Street survival is a term for many street activities.
Obtaining money outside of legitimate ways can include
panhandling, welfare fraud, stealing, prostitution,
dealing drugs, etc.
 In general, street survival is a comprehensive term for
various street activities.

7. Cont.
 By manipulating impressions, skilfully appraising and
adjusting odds on events of chances, and by providing
scarce or illicit services and goods, street kids enhance
their own survival as the attempt to obtain money outside
the conventional world of legitimate work.
 This income generating behaviour includes a plethora of
con games such as panhandling, welfare frauds,
shoplifting, stealing, dealing in drugs and stolen goods
and prostitution
 Youth personalize crime as a parasitic life form of survival
 Power exploits images of crime

8.  Life on the Street: Street Survivors
 Many street kids note the excitement of the streets as a pulling
force.
 The idea of freedom and adventure which removes them from
their everyday boring lives is a big influence-
 school also plays a part, they resent the boredom of school.
Very few speak of the benefit of formal education
 Teachers are seen as troublesome because they tell parents
the bad things they are doing
 For street youth, family problems such as physical and
emotional abuse interfere with school performance.
 Perceived family and school experiences are used to bring into
focus a variety of legitimations designed to make good their
claims that the street represents freedom

9.  Hitting the Streets
 Before becoming street kids, they become aware of what to
expect
 Many street kids have had many experiences in the streets
before deciding to move there
 New kids have a hard time fitting in , they are on the streets but
not of them
 At first the kids are not fully accepted.
 Age is a liability for the newcomers because if they are too
young, police can force them to go back to their group home, or
family home, etc
 Work is seen to interfere with their lives and fun
 Early difficulties on the street including the inability to secure
food leads that street kids being more susceptible to involvement
with seasoned street kids

10.  Establishing Street Connections and Transforming
Identities
 The structure of street relations is a contingency (likelihood) that
shapes the newcomers self-image as well as their understanding
of situational difficulties .
 By going to popular hangouts, new street kids meet seasoned
street kids. Many like to have contact with many different groups
 Newcomers get information from seasoned street kids and their
difficult situation help them in forming bonds.
 Seasoned kids expose new kids to different types of illegal
activity.
 Seasoned kids will take new kids they trust under their wing and
help them become street savvy-

11.  Newcomers become caught up in reciprocal expectations that
facilitate apprenticeship. Norms of reciprocity require these role
incumbents to help those who have guided them.
 Newcomers are used by season kids to help in illegal activities
and are often seen to seasoned kids as revenue as the money
they make is to be shared with their street buddies often to cover
the cost of rent , groceries , drugs or bail.
 Newcomers are also motivated by self-interest. Seasoned kids
help them learn to make money and secure a street education,
however these bonds also help to make up their relationships thus
not only assisting in self-interest.

12. Conceptualizing Street Hooking : Prostitution vs. Sex
Trade
 Prostitution provides sex to people viewed as inside the moral
bubble of society & give desire to their clients
 Capitalism supports and controls sex as a commodity
 The liberation of desire is implicitly the liberation of a particular
desire
 Sex trade shows the power and dominance in sexuality
 Prostitution to Marx is only a specific expression of the general
prostitution of the labourer
 Survival ethic helps hustling to be seen as normal
 Prostitutes ensure they form no attachment to their clients.
 The exchange of money neutralizes the acts
 Prostitutes often hate their clients

13. Street Kids As Street Workers:
 Hustlers are good at evaluating outsiders especially police and
social workers
 As prostitutes get older, they often lose business and have to
offer cheaper rates and more services to make ends meet
 Street kids develop appropriate ideologies and defense
mechanisms
 Their value systems serve to shield them from the negative
attitudes of outsiders, to distance themselves from their tricks
and to protect themselves from internalized social stigma
 A collective occupational identity is created
 The internal culture helps control activities separate from outside
culture

14. Techniques of Containment
 Dangerous disaffiliation (to terminate an affiliation, meaning
street kids are seen as detached from prevailing social norms
and values.
 It is argued that young street populations threatened social
relations of production in capitalist societies.
 Since they are unable to find a market for their labour, they turn
to crime and immorality.
 Territorial containment is an overriding strategy used in
controlling prostitution where prostitution is okay in some areas
and not others
 Prostitution is tolerated in certain districts away from more
reputable neighbourhoods.

15. Cony.,
 Some say that since those partaking in street hustling are
unable to find a market for their labour, they turn to crime and
immorality .
 They are beyond the socializing controls of conventional society
 Their independence require pacification In order to maintain
transients an urban order.
 Street communities are treated like contained colonies.
 This geographic segregation creates limited zones for the
unwanted where they are permitted to cluster in work and play.

16. Cont.,.
 Gentrification -The movement of upper income status groups
into the inner city, has been refashioning new downtown
communities of bourgeois privilege.
 Both the influx of new housing and increased private business
developments of office and retail complexes in the inner city are
dispersing street prostitutes to other areas of the city. More
significantly, this trend towards reclaiming the inner core results
in increased surveillance of prostitutes.
 Space is a relevant feature of control
 Police are more prevalent in areas where youth crime is high
 Regulation by repressive tolerance is the most common
approach used to contain prostitution
 Police interfere in a prostitute’s ability to make money by
constantly policing them

17. The Disengagement Process
 Disengagement happens when someone abandons involvement
in something- this happens over time
 Children’s idealized image of street life fades. They realize they
are not satisfied with street life.
 After about a year, kids realize how hard street life is and wish to
abandon it and may do so when alternatives arise.
 It is hard for kids to abandon the streets since they have bonded
with other street youth
 Often girls engaged in prostitution have a harder time
disengaging
 disengaging happens when bonds are made with people that do
not live on the streets
 Isolated street kids- ones with few ties tend to disengage faster
than ones with many ties.

18. Lessons from the Street
 The interpretive perspective stresses the need to consider the
negotiations of meanings behind the formation of career stages
and their contingencies.
 The action of any individual stems from the meanings derived
from a shared stock of knowledge that defines their social reality.
 Actors react according to the interpretations suggested by these
meanings.
 Careers therefore as mentioned earlier, are social
accomplishments.
 Within this perspective, the concept of career encompasses the
common everyday properties of interaction and social identity.
 .