This paper draws on an affirmative biopolitical framework to analyze the governing of young lives in education and social spaces in Cusco, Peru. We engage with Berlant's theorization of affect and spatialization of biopolitics in order to discuss youth's embodied experiences of alternative forms of biopolitical governance. With a case study of a grassroots, non-profit center for residential care and social and educational programs for Quechua-speaking girls, we investigate how the girls sense and respond to the center's mediation of rural-to-urban projects of "getting ahead," domestic work, and the tourism and hospitality sector. We reveal the center's biopoliticization of their lives in an affective manner within the processes of postcolonial educational marginalization, precarity in urban economies, professionalization, and tourism in and beyond Cusco. Our study intends to contribute to an expanded understanding of the production of education, aid, social care, and protection spaces, and to highlight the utility of affective inquiry in examining the contested terrains of (alternative) childhoods/youth.

INTRODUCTION 1.1 Putting intervention and marginalization in context 1.2 Studying "alternative" interventions from youths' perspectives 1.3 Deploying analytics of "affective life" for critical inquiry CHAPTER 2: AFFECT, EMBODIMENT AND "ALTERNATIVE" INTERVENTIONS IN YOUNG PEOPLE'S WELFARE: A FRAMEWORK 2.1 Geographies of children and youth 2.1.1 Young people's perspectives and experiences: affect and embodiment for conceptual and theoretical innovation 2.1.2 Interventions in young people's lives and welfare: affect and "alternative" interventions 2.2 Geographies of development and volunteering 2.3 A Berlantian approach to embodiment and affective life CHAPTER 3: AN ETHNOGRAPHY OF AFFECTIVE LIFE AND A MULTI-METHOD APPROACH TO YOUTHS' EXPRESSIONS 3.1 Research design focusing on young participants' "expressions" 3.2 Descriptions of the youths and the two organizations 3.2.1 Notes on case selection 3.2.2 Runachay 3.2.3 CARA 3.3 An ethnographic approach to affective life 3.3.1 Positionality and conduct in the field 3.3.2 Ethnographic evidence of affective life? A quandary 3.4 The mosaic design for generating expressions with young participants 3.4.1 Informed consent 3.4.2 In-depth interviews with elicitation activities 3.4.3 Diary/notebook 3.5 Data analysis and content of the following two chapters XI Contents CHAPTER 4: AFFIRMATIVE BIOPOLITICS: SOCIAL AND VOCATIONAL EDUCATION FOR QUECHUA GIRLS IN THE POST-COLONIAL "AFFECTSPHERE" OF CUSCO, PERU 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Cruel optimism, affectsphere, affirmative biopolitics 4.3 The Runachay social center and methodological notes 4.4 The affective biopolitics of "getting ahead" 4.5 The promises of domestic work 4.5.1 The affective pedagogy of saving 4.5.2 Apprehending gendered work 4.6 The promises of tourism and hospitality work 4.6.1 Professional bartending and enterprising subjectivities 4.6.2 Precarious tourism, its aspirants, and discontents 4.7 Conclusion CHAPTER 5: AFFECTIVE LIFE, "VULNERABLE" YOUTHS AND INTERNATIONAL VOLUNTEERING IN A RESIDENTIAL CARE PROGRAMME IN CUSCO, PERU 1 The rationale and substance of what I tentatively addressed as "alternative" interventions here can be influenced by diverse ideologies and cultural values, and it is not my thesis's intention to readily qualify any such intervention as "progressive", "radical" or otherwise (see also the discussion on Kraftl, 2015 in Chapter 2). For other uses of the term "alternative" in discussions related to "alternative" care or education interventions, see

This paper critically engages with the implications of the "affect turn" in the geographies of development and volunteering. By way of considering "affective life" at a residential youth care centre in Peru through an ethnographic study, we aim to contribute to current discussions of "(self-)transformation" taking place through affectivity in the experience of volunteering. Conceptually, our approach to investigating "affective life" and volunteering involves two steps. First, we critically review this body of work's recent focus on the individualistic mode of volunteer self-transformation in encountering "vulnerable others." We identify the need to think about affect and embodiment also from the perspectives of the "vulnerable" groups whose lives are entangled with the presence of international volunteering. Second, we argue for an affect-informed approach to socio-politically shaped vulnerability, with a particular emphasis on lived experiences and affective capacities related to enduring social and material conditions. Against the backdrop of marginalisation of adolescent mothers from rural and indigenous backgrounds, many of whom are survivors of sexual abuse, we analyse the experiences of these youths living at a specific residential care centre and interacting with volunteers on a daily basis. In doing so, we employ a series of perspectives from the residents, while taking into account the organisational environment. We also show the complex ways in which resident-volunteer encounters are at play in life-enhancing affective states, capacities, and relations emerging among the residents. Our findings on the residents' self-and shared capacity of transformation highlights the importance of attending to the spatialities of affective life in academic work focused on the contemporary geographies of international volunteering.