KS literary ticket. EP 54. “Survive … children and young people from the street” of Chakib Guessous, or the asphalt as horizon

The Essay by Chakib Guessous. For example, published in May 2025 at the La Croisée des Chemins editions, constitutes a major turning point in the understanding of a forgotten social reality. In addition, Over the chapters, Guessous clarifies the terms of the debate and offers essential conceptual distinctions. For example. Similarly, he clearly distinguishes “Children in the street” – Those who spend long days there, but come back to sleep at home -“Street children», Who live there permanently after a total or partial break with their family. However. Therefore, the major contribution of this survey lies in the pioneer description of a particularly worrying new generation: “The emergence of the natives of the street”that is to say children born from mothers themselves homeless and who grow up without any traditional family attachment.

“Street newborns”. Consequently, a worrying ks literary ticket. ep 54. epiphenomenon

Ces «Street newborn“Have never known any other universe than that of bitumen:”These generations do not know houses and do not integrate the dimension of domicile, in their reasoning […]; They have not acquired these social conceptions, which means that their mind evolves in a exploded wayAlert the sociologist. Consequently, Even if the phenomenon is only in its infancy – “For the time being. Similarly, we have some cases ”he specifies-he announces an unprecedented challenge for the future. Furthermore, How these children. Nevertheless, born and raised on the street, will they be able to build their benchmarks and a stable social identity without any prior experience of a life “normal»In the home? Similarly, The author entrusts his dismay and calls for deepening research on this subject by crossing sociological and psychological approaches. Similarly, The introduction of the concept of “Street nativesIn the debate thus constitutes an innovative advance. ks literary ticket. ep 54. Moreover, which widens the reflection beyond individual courses and questions the intergenerational transmission of the phenomenon. Furthermore, By this precise framing, the sociologist refines the understanding of the scourge and refuses hasty generalizations.

Poignant life stories. Nevertheless, faces of the invisible

If the approach is scientific, the lively force of the work lies in the human testimonies that the author collects and highlights. Moreover, Chakib Guessous plunges us into the daily lives of these children. Furthermore, young people who roam the sidewalks of cities, leaving childhood shreds. Meanwhile, But who are they? For example, The author observes, for example, that in Casablanca, “People excluding street are all ages. However, the first decade of life is very weakly represented. For example, The number of street residents is growing from 15 years old ”. It is adolescents and young adults who are most numerous. The “11 to 20 ks literary ticket. ep 54. year olds” tranche is thus the most represented. interesting more than one in three street residents according to the sociologist. “21 to 30 years” represent just over one in five residentshe explains.

Page after page, these votes emerge, raw and without eyeshadow, forcing us to face what the company refuses to see. The author readily gives way to these children so that they tell their stories – leaks from the family home. abuse suffered, wandering and manifests, tenus hopes. Each testimony is restored with respect, without superfluous pathos, but imbued with painful poetry. A daily life summarizes in a few words, which slam as a survival manifesto: “Cold, hunger, absence. But also courage, hope, fraternity between the sidewalk stones. ” Through this litany where ks literary ticket. ep 54. the most raw distress. the most vibrant humanity rub shoulders with the rage to live in a youth tossed between the abandonment and the improvised solidarity of the companions of misfortune.

Faces behind the numbers: a lively humanity

The strength of the book is due to. this permanent incarnation of sociological facts through individual destinies. The figures – when they exist – take shape thanks to first names, ages, looks. Chakib Guessous also underlines the need for official data: “We have no idea of the number of street children. in Morocco in 2025”he deplores bitterly. Faced with this statistical vacuum which invisits the problem. he opposes the very real presence of these children in our streets, presence which he documents by observation and listening. The author thus sketches striking portraits of young people with various courses: such a teenager fleeing a violent home. finding refuge under ks literary ticket. ep 54. a bridge with a group, such a little girl exploited for daytime begging and then returned to a semblance of a home every evening.

Read also: Homeless children: “The street becomes a refuge when the family is a danger”. alert chakib guessous

The test finely restores this diversity of situations: all street children are not orphans or completely uprooted – some “Spend their days working on the street and go home in the evening”thus participating in an economy of begging sometimes orchestrated by adults. Others. on the other hand, have no households and try, as best they can, to recreate a family of substitution on bitumen, sharing its dangers, but also ephemeral moments of camaraderie.

The author never reduces these young people to simple cases of study. On the contrary, he insisted on their individuality, their intrinsic dignity and their dreams, which survive despite everything. ks literary ticket. ep 54. “Every child in the street has their own dreams”he affirms in substance. refusing that these young people are only defined by their shortcomings or their differences. Chakib Guessous thus highlights “The resources. resilience of these young people who continue to dream and fight for their dignity”. At the bend of a page. we discover a 15 year old boy who, sleeping under an arcade, secretly likes to draw manga, or this other child who, barefoot on tar, speaks every night to the stars by imagining that they will transmit his wishes to a benevolent god. These highlights of striking humanity give the work an undeniable vital dimension: the style remains modest. but knows how to marry the involuntary poetry of those who only have their words and their dreams.

From the street to the margins: spirals of violence. outbuildings and challenges of reintegration

The author addresses ks literary ticket. ep 54. The magnitude of the street drug addiction by evoking the scourge of glue and solvent sniffing, a phenomenon appeared in the 1990s and still widespread among young wanders (even if precise figures are lacking, field associations note an increase in dependencies).

The author analyzes with painful precision how mistreatment. sexual or psychological abuse, family disintegration and extreme poverty form the soil of the exodus of minors to the street. This appears both as a final refuge in the face of the unbearable. as a trap exposing these children to new dangers (drugs, delinquency, exploitation). The test explores these complex mechanisms leading to marginality and also highlights the difficulties linked to reintegration. For example. a child having long “work” In the begging will hardly accept a remunerated training program below what he obtained by making the round, a concrete obstacle that associations frequently encounter. The author also addresses the ks literary ticket. ep 54. question of violence suffered. then reproduced: many young people in the street have been victims of brutality (servants or urban) and in turn develop aggressive or self -destructive behavior. Psychological support thus becomes essential to any attempt at reintegration – a dimension often neglected by current devices.

“Surviving … Children. young people in the street” is primarily intended for a non -specialist readership, eager to understand a complex social reality. Beyond the Moroccan context. the work inscribes its remarks from a global perspective, not hesitating to compare the situation of children from the streets of Morocco with that of other countries, evoking a catalog of different realities in other countries and regions. This comparative dimension makes it possible to clarify what makes Moroccan specificity (for example the persistence of organized begging). while showing that the phenomenon of “Children on the sidelines” is a planetary problem. This punch ks literary ticket. ep 54. book is not content to denounce. it offers in hollow a more united society model, where the child – whatever it is – becomes an absolute priority. The last pages, imprints of lucid hope, stress that if the situation is critical, it is not immutable.

On the author

Researcher engaged in social policies in Morocco. Chakib Guessous – coffender of the association Riad Al Amal in – work in the reintegration of street children. We owe him in particular “the exploitation of innocence – child labor in Morocco” (2002). «The pregnancies of shame – girls in Morocco “in collaboration with Soumaya Naamane Guessous (2006, reissued in 2011) or” Marriage and cohabitation in Arab countries “(2018).

“Survive … children and young people from the street”, Chakib Guessous, 278 pages. The Crossroads of Chemins, 2025. Public price: 110 DHS.