Everyday violence and child care in the global south. Refusal as useful theoretical and methodological toolEveryday violence and child care in the global south. Refusal as useful theoretical and methodological tool

LLOBET, VALERIA

Londres

Workshop; Reimagining Childhoods; 2021

University City of London

My fieldwork has been around the nexus of children?s rights and state policies in Argentina and Latin America, focusing on social inclusion programs oriented to marginalized children. I consider this to be a powerful point of entry for understanding the complex contemporary dynamics of government.So, when the organizers invited me to reflect upon refusal, I recalled my many encounters with the state agents in the community centers that implemented the social programs I studied, and what they saw as a stubborn lack of participation, which was always their main concern. These programs are usually workshops in marginalized neighborhoods, and include tea and lunches for at-risk children together with small cash transfers. State agents always speak of those policies as a means for emancipation and the expansion of rights. Therefore, ?citizenship? and ?children?s rights?, far from being foremost and exclusively state categories for reproducing inequalities, or identities that capture and contain demands in a ?civilized? manner to render them legible to the capitalist state, are being understood by those actors as categories that crucially modify children?s possibilities of being cared for, and for securing their futures.