Can I tell you, my story? A critical hermeneutic inquiry into the life narratives of Ugandan children living within an orphanage in Kampala

Abstract

The detrimental impact of childcare institutions (CCIs), or orphanages, is well known. Despite deinstitutionalisation strategies in Uganda, CCIs remain the predominant intervention method employed by Western actors responding to the needs of children there. Reforming this approach requires contextualised critical understandings of the children’s experiences and perspectives of their institutionalisation, to reduce the misidentification and misappropriation of children as orphans. Therefore, operationalising the theoretical lens of Bourdieu within critical hermeneutic analyses, this article draws upon the narratives of 30 children living within an orphanage in Kampala, to enhance critical understandings of their experiences, perspectives, and behaviours throughout transition from home to an orphanage, via the streets of Kampala, illuminating how and why they come to be living there. Guided by Ricœur’s critical hermeneutic approach, the study found that poverty drives children to the streets in search of economic opportunity and organisations perceived to offer access to basic services of which they are deprived, such as education. Education, as a form of cultural capital, is understood amongst participants as ensuring an elevated position within society, or a means of overcoming poverty. Within this transition from home to the orphanage, whilst on the streets, socially acquired dispositions and harmful stereotypes contribute to the manifestation of the ‘street kid’ construct, for which the children are marginalised, and experience physical and sexual abuse. Girls are most at risk, whereby gender inequality contributes to their exploitation and the normalisation of rape. However, for the children entry into a CCI from the streets means relinquishing agency and social capital that is integral to them, often.