Applying vulnerability analysis

African children in an urban environment

Roos Keja

Course: Development and Social Change

Lecturer: Prof. Dr. M. E. de Bruijn

Leiden, 27 March 2008

Introduction

The children of the Mbororo who have recently moved to the margins of the city are the
subject of talks. The story goes that families fall apart; children are said to be ‘dropping out’,
girls into prostitution and boys into criminal gangs. There is little knowledge about what is
really going on, and to which extent these gossips bear aspects of reality. The children face a
lot of challenges that were absent in their parents’ childhood. Their move from a mobile way
of life to sedentary life is the most obvious. Some of these children are presently following
‘modern’ education, unlike their parents who could attend the Koranic school when they
were young. Likewise, new technologies, like mobile phones and internet, are transforming
social relations and create new inequalities. In my research, I aim to describe the changing
social relations from the perspective of the younger generations of this former nomadic Fulbe
group in town. I am interested in how the children of the Mbororo who have recently settled
in the town of Bamenda, perceive their life and position themselves in the social structure
that they belong to, that is under pressure of the rapid transformation of modernisation and
urbanisation processes. Simply said, what happens to the children in the city?
The subject of my research will be children in a marginalised group in an urban
environment in Bamenda, Cameroon. In this paper I will make an elementary analysis of this
subject by using the concept ‘vulnerability’. Vulnerability can be used as a concept that links
the relationship that people have with their environment to institutions and social processes
and the underlying cultural values that counter or reinforce them (Hilhorst & Bankoff 2004).
After discussing the importance of images in the representation of reality, I will try to discern
the emic-etic scale and discuss the concept of ‘agency’ in light of the research subject.
Subsequently, I will give three hypotheses related to social change for my research, using the
concept of vulnerability. The etic perspective of the researcher who tries to capture an emic
perspective will be of concern, and finally it will become clear in what way vulnerability
analysis can help explaining the situation and ideas of African children in general and
Mbororo children in Bamenda in particular.

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Representations of reality

Photo 1: A child in the city

Photo 2: The child in an urban environment

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 Photo 3: Begging talibés in a Senegalese city

When dealing with the subject of children in Africa, the concept of vulnerability is never far
away. The aim of showing these three photos is to emphasize the great extent to which the
representation of reality can be manipulated. The choice of showing a certain image highly
influences the conception of reality of the spectators. Almost without effort, I was able to
reinforce the image of the poor child in the first photo by placing the young boy out of his
environment. I expect the spectator judges the boy to look a little less desolated on the
second photo in comparison with the first one, because there is greenery at the background.
The third photo is the original, depicting a gang of reasonably joyful boys. I do not want to
deny that the young boy gives a sad appearance. He does not look happier in this third
image than in the preceding images, and he looks less happy than the other boys. However,
the difference is that the spectator now knows that this boy is not alone in the world, he is
part of a group.
Being a researcher who sees children as social actors, it is in my interest to show the
context in which the children live, including their social network and the fabrics of their
relations. One reason to show the last photo is to oppose the image of a lonely, unprotected
child, that is displayed and reinforced by many development organisations (see Kleinman
1997: 7-8 and Holland 1992: 150). In doing research with children in Africa, one has to deal
with the power of the ‘development business’, involving institutions like UNICEF and the

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World Bank and IMF, followed by many NGOs. These institutions have the power to impose
their view on children on other institutions, groups and individuals on the international,
national, local and personal level. Most of these institutions portray children as victims,
vulnerable creatures exposed to the harsh reality that is their life.

Etic or emic perspectives?

With regard to children, the concept of vulnerability has become a concept for action in the
NGO world, as well as in the context of Cameroonian society. From an etic point of view,
Mbororo children are viewed as vulnerable. Most of these children do not attend school,
especially the girls, and as said before, some NGOs say they end up either in criminal gangs
or prostitution. As depicted by some, their parents are not better off. The NGO Village Aid
(2008) describes the situation as follows: ‘Traditional Mbororo society suffers severe
persecution at the hands of state institutions, and is badly equipped to cope with the rapid
pace of change which is affecting all of Africa’. Presuming there is something like a
‘traditional Mbororo society’, the people who form this society are portrayed as nothing
more than victims, suffering from external influences.
The Mbororo Social and Cultural Development Organisation MBOSCUDA was founded in
1992 to ‘protect the rights and cultural identity of the Mbororo’. This organisation principally
aims at the ‘traditional’ Mbororo in the rural areas as opposed to the ‘town Fulbe’ (Pelican
2007). As the headquarters of the organisation are located in the town of Bamenda, run by
‘town Mbororo’, clear distinctions cannot always be made. However, MBOSCUDA is very
successful in claiming an ‘emic’ perspective. Following Pelican (Ibid.: 11) MBOSCUDA has
been instrumental in redefining Mbororo national citizenship. It is interesting to consider the
images this organisation creates of the plight of the Mbororo. The ‘major challenges faced by
the Mbororo’ are described as follows (Lajong 2008):
- the limited but increasing juvenile delinquency
- unemployment
- early and forceful marriages
- gender imbalance
- low level of education
- limited access to social amenities
- weak and loose Mbororo traditional institutions

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Poignant is the fact that no positive aspects of Mbororo life are mentioned here. The fact that
the given themes in this evaluation of Mbororo life are called ‘challenges’ implies an ‘etic’
call for action to face and to fight these challenges. It appears that MBOSCUDA does not
represent the opinion of all the people she claims to give a voice to. In fact, the organisation
might be moving well into the etic.
By successfully depicting this group of people as vulnerable in fundraising activities,
MBOSCUDA can earn a good income, even as its partner NGOs. This suggestion does not
imply that the Mbororo do or do not face problems. The point is that some organisations or
individuals make use of the image of suffering people from which they can profit. Suffering
children are even more an object of success. In line of Foucaultian thought, it becomes
important who has the power to define someone as suffering and, subsequently, who has the
power to make and implement policies to ‘alleviate’ this suffering (Frerks & Bender 2004:
199-203).

Hypotheses related to social change and vulnerability

Moving back to the research subject, the life world of the Mbororo children in town, it can be
stated that hardly any attention is given to the opinions of the children themselves. A
question that would be interesting for this research would be whether the children consider
themselves as being vulnerable. Three out of the seven ‘challenges’ that MBOSCUDA has
mentioned, directly relate to the children: juvenile delinquency, early marriage and
education. The other aspects affect the children’s life as well. Which children are involved in
this, which children are more affected by these things than others and due to what reasons?
Has MBOSCUDA asked the children themselves what they think of these aspects? If so,
which children were asked? Do different stakeholders know what is problematic or
agreeable for the children or do they assume they know what is best for the children? As
Frerks and Bender (2004: 2000) stress, the construction of vulnerability is intimately linked to
perceptions and actions of stakeholders, and it is indispensable to take their views into
account.
As will be clear by now, I assume most of the stakeholders do not know what children
themselves think. This is a very general remark that must be explored more thoroughly as it
runs the risk of oversimplifying the issue and generalizing ‘all the children’ and ‘all the
stakeholders’. However, like for instance Hecht (1998), Ennew (2003) and De Bruijn (2007), I
do believe that the emic point of view, which involves the agency of children, is often

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overlooked. In the research, I want to describe the life world of the children in the context of
social change and processes of urbanisation and modernisation. Two questions that follow
from looking at this research subject from the angle of vulnerability analysis are:

1) How do different stakeholders - parents, government institutions, scientific

researchers, civil society, international development institutions, fellow citizens, the
children and their friends etc. - influence 1) the life world of these children, and 2) the
perceptions that other stakeholders have of these children.

2) Not only stakeholders influence each others opinions and behaviour towards the
children, the material world around the children is also of influence; what opportunities
do the children have, do they go to school, do they have access to medical health care?
How and with whom do the children negotiate their position on different scales?

As a researcher I will try to give a voice to a group of Mbororo children, but the extent to
which I will be able to do this well is unclear because I take my own ‘etic’ framework along.
Being a human being in the first place and thereafter a scientist, creates all kinds of
dilemmas. Of course individual traits and history colour questions, research format and
outcomes. The best, and the least that a researcher can do is to be very aware of his own
position and make this explicit to himself and to others. Being raised in a country where
children are taught that all Africans are suffering from either poverty, hunger, war, diseases
or a combination of these leaves its marks. For the biggest part of my life, I have believed
that most of the children in Africa have flies around their eyes and either die or live with a
swollen belly. The idea that the poor children should be helped by ‘us, the rich’ because their
environment is not able to help them, is everywhere around us (Holland 1992: 150-162).
Relating these feelings to the three images above, it is hard for a Western individual like
myself to understand why some societies allow for their children roaming the streets in filthy
clothes, begging for food and money. An answer can be found in the analysis of societal
processes, in analysing the existing discourses on children and the images that are being
created by different stakeholders who have different interests. The presumed vulnerability of
these children becomes more comprehensible when exploring the different layers of which it
exists. Their vulnerability might be exaggerated by NGOs and other institutions, and
underestimated by their parents and neighbours, while the children themselves might never
question their situation.

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Conclusions

When one wants to show a picture of children that is not in line with the dominant global
discourse, vulnerability analysis can be very helpful. One by one the different actors and
their interests can be deciphered. The image of an African child in front of a pale wall, all
alone, brings across a certain feeling to the spectator. The presumed suffering of a child can
be hard to deal with for individuals, groups or institutions, but when analysing the context
one can better understand the processes. With a better understanding, wiser decisions can be
made by policy makers who have the money - and equally power - to change the situation of
certain people who are deemed ‘vulnerable’. However, the power of policy makers should
not be over-emphasized; there are many examples that show that the impact of their
interventions is either negative or non-existent. To see these people as social actors and as
protagonists of their own lives, able to adapt quickly to changing circumstances, does a lot
more justice to them than seeing them as victims only.

References

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Structure: Social and Historical Trajectories of Agency in Africa. Leiden [etc.]: Brill, pp. 263-284.

Ennew, J. 2003. Difficult Circumstances: Some Reflections on ‘Street Children’ in Africa

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