It has been widely acknowledged in recent years that contemporary ideas about children and childhoods are framed by perceptions and definitions that are both Western/minority world and adult-centred. This paper argues that this is not only the case for theoretical concepts but is also found in research practice, and, in particular, in the commonly accepted ethical frameworks for conducting research with children and young people. Drawing from multi-sited fieldwork and a combined ethnographic methodology of participant observation and semi-structured interviews, this paper discusses the realities of conducting research with itinerant street vending children and young people in busy Nigerian streets and marketplaces in Enugu urban, who had never taken part in a research project. It explores five key ethical issues that arose from the study and reflects on the dilemmas involved with researching and relating with such a highly mobile group within a chaotic, yet organised market environment. The paper concludes that doing ethical research with children and young people in the developing world is fraught with issues and dilemmas that can best be resolved not by adopting textbook, ‘Western’ ethical research frameworks and constructions that do not reflect the lived realities of non-western children, but by constantly negotiating and renegotiating boundaries of inequalities, moral values, cultural beliefs and practices and specific contexts within which majority world children live and grow.
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