This research investigated the relationship between the ideology of the National Movement of Street Children (NMSC) and the experiences and actions of a group of children linked with it. documents produced from the NMSC and twenty interviews conducted with children between the ages of 12 and 17 years who belonged to the National Movement of Street Children from Campina Grande, Brazil, were analyzed. The analysis showed that there was an understanding of the dominant ideology, since those children relate life improvement to studying and working. Nevertheless, they also understand the NMSC ideology, which considers education as an achievement of the citizen’s rights. At last, it concluded that the act of acquiring knowledge about reality and the action resulting from it provide the children from the NMSC with a continuous struggle for their rights, which implies a ‘reconstructive ideology’.
Ideology; street children; National Movement of Street Children Citizenship