Squeegee Punks reunite: safe streets for all: an insider qualitative study

Abstract

Squeegee Punks were a fixture on many busy street corners in urban cities in Canada in the mid to late 1990s. During the height of the squeegee kid phenomenon, multiple studies were conducted on how squeegee work impacted street kids and their subsequent criminalization through the Ontario Safe Street Act. However, studies have not been conducted on Ontario's former Squeegee Kids since 1999. This insider qualitative research provides the lived experience perspective of (n=9) squeegee workers from the 1990s. This study used the following guiding research questions: 1) How did Squeegee Punks in Ontario experience the moral panic surrounding squeegee work? 2) What can the processes surrounding the construction and management of a squeegee punk deviant identity add to our understanding of how people navigate deviant identities? 3) What social and historical conditions interacted with the moral panic to shape the Squeegee Punk deviant identity? 4) What policy lessons can we learn from the experiences of Squeegee Punks in the 1990s, and what alternative policy responses were available?