Call for Papers.
Workshop:

Child displacement, appropriation and circulation: management techniques aimed at children and their families in environments of inequality and violence

1ª Bienal Latinoamericana de Infancias y Juventudes

Manizales, Colombia

17th-21st November 2014

In Latin America, such as in other regions of the world, armed conflicts, dictatorships, political repression, the devastation produced by wars and the development of diverse mechanisms of reproductive government (Morgan & Roberts 2012) have resulted in the displacement and/or separation of numerous children from their birth families. Either through national or international adoption, foster care, and institutionalization or through the appropriation and substitution of their identities, many children have been placed in family, cultural and/or national environments that are different from those of their birth environment. Aiming at different objectives according to the diverse socio-historical and political contexts, such usually coactive practices, in some cases unprecedented, were combined with governmentalitytechniques (bureaucratic and judicial procedures) and long-standing “life policies” (Fassin 2007) (customary ways of thinking and social ideas on the “protection” and “salvation” of children and their families and/or communities). These were extended and widely accepted thanks to “truth systems” (Foucault, 1978), anchored to (disciplinary) morality standards through which private reproductive behaviors and their public expressions can be governed.

In many cases, these kinds of “critical” events (Das 1995) made visible the socio-cultural schemes that facilitated these practices of child displacement and the separation of children from their birth families. In other cases, it made it possible to get to know the historical depth of informal practices of “child circulation”, which families carried out in order to deal with the rearing of their children, as well as “vertical transfer” mechanisms, through which certain children were separated from their birth families to make them available for adoption.

In this context of analysis, this Workshop aims to:

– Contribute to the knowledge of the proceedings, explanations, moral values and legal procedures used in order to carry out and justify the separation and movement/displacement of children from their birth environments and their placement in alien filiations relationships and other socio-family realities, through diverse forms of violence (wars, practices of social engineering or reproductive governmentality).

– Deploy a comparative approach that combines theoretical discussions from the field of childhood, family and reproductivegovernmentality studies with ethnographic findings from diverse spatio-temporal contexts, in order to analyze the modalities that characterize the diverse practices of legal/illegal/coercive/voluntary/regulated circulation, as well as those of appropriation and child removal through identity substitution.

– Analyze the transnational dimension of such practices, since many children from populations devastated by to natural disasters, extreme poverty or wars are displaced to high-income countries. This practice both depends on and deepens the inequality between those who give and those who receive, a situation that, through international legislation on inter-country adoption (The Hague, 1993), has turned some countries into “providers” of children and youth to various destinations in order to fulfill different tasks.

– Analyze the diversity of actors, organizations and organisms that take part in one way or another in the deployment of these techniques, as well as deepening the analysis of notions of childhood, family, maternity, kinship, protection and rights, which function as the basis and support of such techniques.

– Deepen the processes of construction of demands of truth and justice that have been promoted in recent years by various social organizations and human rights bodies from a range of countries.

-Invigorate and expand knowledge on the modalities that have characterized the practices of child responsibility transfers, as well as deepen the debate with respect to the forms of current public policies aimed at protecting the right to personal intimacy, family living and child identity, and debates brought about the right to know one’s “

We encourage those who are interested in participating to send a title, abstract (of no more than 250 words) and a short cv until July 14 to:

Carla Villalta: carla-villalta@hotmail.com or Diana Marre: diana.marre@uab.es

‘Border crossings’: Transitions of Children and Youth in Times of Crisis paper session

4th International Conference on Geographies of Children, Young People and Families, San Diego, California: January 12-15, 2015

Session organiser: Helena Pimlott-Wilson (Loughborough University)

Session Theme
Global transformations are rapidly altering young peoples’ experiences of growing up (Jeffrey, 2010).   The recent economic crisis has placed pressure on national economies and labour markets throughout the world; yet, the impacts of restructuring have been uneven within nations.  In particular, the impact on children and youth is noteworthy (see Edwards and Weller 2010) as young people navigate present challenges and look towards the future.  This session aims to raise questions about the way in which the current economic downturn affects both the current lived experiences of children and youth, and their transitions in education, employment, housing and relationships.  The session conceives the over-arching conference theme of ‘borders’ in a variety of ways; including those that are abstract, experiential, imagined and tangible. While the border might be a point in time such as leaving home or seeking paid work, it might also be events of economic change, or be existing or new kinds of borders that emerge or loom as a result of such change, such as borders of poverty, partnership dissolution and un/employment.

This session aims to bring together research exploring the transitions of children and youth in austere times from a variety of (inter)national contexts.  The session aims to consider the breadth and depth of such economic change as experienced by children and youth in relation to the frontiers of the past, present and future. It will focus on how children and youth cope during such turbulent times, and how they draw on the past, present and future to do so.  It will examine how experiences, perceptions and understandings of the future and futurity according to children and youth have been shaped by recent economic changes, and likewise how they feel about the future in relation to past and on-going events.

This session will explore all aspects of transition for children and youth in the context of economic crisis.
Topics prospective contributors might wish to address include, but are not limited to:

• dimensions of the education-to-work transition including earnings, job security, occupational attainment and working conditions;

• housing and domestic transitions;

• critical approaches to aspirations;

• employment, unemployment and job insecurity (past, present and future)

• coping strategies during, and experiences of, economic change;

• changing understandings of the markers of adulthood;

Being Involved
Please send your title and abstract of a maximum of 250 words by Friday 17th July 2014 to Helena Pimlott-Wilson (H.Pimlott-Wilson@lboro.ac.uk) Thank you