An Investigation into the ‘Life-world’ of Children and their Forms of Urban Agency in a Transient Neighbourhood in Mutwal, Sri Lanka

More than half of the world’s children live in cities and towns. Despite the limited child studies on urban children in global-south, children in developing countries contribute to making of urban places. The research was grounded on the policy framework set by UN’s 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child, UNICEF’s Child-Friendly Cities Initiative (CFCI) & Child Friendly Cities framework (CFCF) that encourage ‘child-participation’ in urban development. Despite the international policies, Sri Lanka’s urban planning has not adopted Children’s participatory process when making decisions on the direction of planned developments for urban areas. The paper investigates a broader research question as to how children in neighbourhoods of Mutwal perform ‘urban agency’ as they play in street spaces. Research objectives were three-fold; i) to understand the nature of neighbourhood play in Mutwal from the perspective of resident children and their caregivers, ii) to understand ‘how children in focus group interact with outdoor street spaces?’ iii) to find if children in focus group enact ‘urban agency’ as they play in streets. The paper presents empirical research capturing every-day ‘life-world’ of children in Mutwal. Method of study was a ‘Focus group study’ based on street-play activities, tracing social connections. ‘The Social Audit Cookbook’ by Eva Cox was used as the guide for research design. Research consisted of gathering qualitative data through interviewing parents and children, carrying out child-led city tours, drawing workshop and photo-elicitation exercise with children aged between 5-14 years. Data was analyzed in the form of content analysis involving thematic coding using NVivo software.