Introduction: Independent Children and their Fields of Relatedness

The idea of this Special Focus first came to us while we were carrying out fundamental research about children in two different countries and contexts in Southeast Asia. While Silvia Vignato was enquiring about children’s rescue after the 2004 tsunami and the end of a 30-year long conflict in Aceh, Giuseppe Bolotta was in the slums of Bangkok, doing research with children connected to NGOs. In both cases, the young people we met were growing up outside their families, however these are defined, and raised in different institutions committed to leading children towards developing specific ideals of adulthood. For different reasons, these children had to acquire various degrees of independence from parental figures