Wed, Apr 10, 2024, 12:20-1:10pm MT, on Zoom
Dr. Christopher Chapman
PhD recipient in Anthropology, Oxford University
Children’s voices are often marginalized in child welfare, yet they offer important insight into the design and delivery of social care. Drawing on yearlong fieldwork in a residential care institution, I explore how one young person, Yusuke, sees himself and his society. I consider how his daily movements in and out of the institution form a wide itinerary of social and affective encounters. I analyze how the journeys of being-in-care index both a lived present and embodied past, sometimes invoking both at once in ambiguous, unplanned ways. Relating this to the broader trajectory of care outcomes, I suggest how the welfare system injects new forms of social precarity into children's lives by way of these forced journeys into care—how children are remade into children of the state. I find overall that the quest of seeking, listening to, and retelling marginalized stories contextualizes new possibilities for understanding the relationship between politics, space, and memory.