Bourdieu, in his conceptualisation of habitus, emphasises that society can become ‘deposited in persons in the form of lasting dispositions, or trained capacities and structured propensities to think, feel and act in determinate ways’. However, these socially derived dispositions can be challenged, eroded and even dismantled when there is exposure to effective counteracting external influences. This article uses a case study of select groups of stigmatised children – ‘street children’ and ‘restavecs’ – in Haiti to reflect on the processes through which negative dispositions can be reproduced and challenged by extant social relations and structures; and how development actors – with their own socially constructed dispositions, including biases and prejudices – intervene in these social contexts, and with consequences. The article uses the case study to show that development actors can have a role in upholding the adverse power relationships that sustain inequalities and injustices. Corrective actions must begin with ‘systematic and rigorous self-critical practice’.