Moving within Urban Hierarchical Spaces: Children’s Trajectories in the Urban Scenario of Bangkok, Thailand

Abstract

This article analyzes slums and slum children (dek salam) in Bankgok from two perspectives. From a diachronic perspective, slums and slum children will be considered as the discursive product of specific historical, economic and socio-cultural changes that hit Thailand after WWII and reproduced a structural conflict between the state, society and transnational agencies. From a synchronic point of view, the article will consider the impact of such discursive formations on the lives of slum children, their subjective experience of being in the world and their positioning within the hierarchical spaces and relations of Thai society. It will focus in particular on the children’s trajectories within the slum and on some of the international charitable institutions for children established outside the slum.