Amoral, im/moral and dis/loyal: Children’s moral status in child welfare

Abstract

This article is a discursive examination of children’s status as knowledgeable moral agents within the Swedish child welfare system and in the widely used assessment framework BBIC. Departing from Fricker’s concept of epistemic injustice, three discursive positions of children’s moral status are identified: amoral, im/moral and dis/loyal. The findings show the undoubtedly moral child as largely missing and children’s agency as diminished, deviant or rendered ambiguous. Epistemic injustice applies particularly to disadvantaged children with difficult experiences who run the risk of being othered, or positioned as reproducing or accommodating to the very same social problems they may be victimised by.

Speaking bodies – silenced voices: Child protection and the knowledge culture of ‘evidencing’

“…In addition, psy disciplines (Rose, 1998) and life sciences that have occupied a great role in studies and practices related to children, including child welfare theory and practice, tend to emphasise health and development (Burman, 2008;Knezevic, 2017Knezevic, , 2020aLee and Motzkau, 2011;Pettersson, 2001;Wells, 2011;Woodhead, 1999). This also applies to the Swedish child welfare and protection assessment framework, BBIC, for which developmental psychology constitutes a central theoretical point of departure, one that remained untouched although the framework itself is a 'travelling' idea (Knezevic, 2017;NBHW, 2018).…”

“…Besides observing bodies and behaviours in situ, social workers also take into account previous assessments and knowledge about a family. This previous knowledge becomes that which is 'known' over time, and helps to assess the future (Knezevic, 2017(Knezevic, , 2020b. In assessments of risks, seeing-believing shifts into, or is combined with, predicting-believing.…”

A Cry for Care But not Justice: Embodied Vulnerabilities and the Moral Economy of Child Welfare

“…In this study, I take a critical stance toward the aforementioned moral economy and its underpinning biologism and “politics of pity” (e.g., Burman, 2017; Fassin, 2005, p. 336; Ticktin, 2011b). Drawing on a social constructionist intersectional framework, this study views childhoods as embedded in and shaped by the socially constructed yet materially significant and “embodied” categories of age, gender, race, class, sexuality, and other axes of differentiation (Knezevic, 2017; Burman, 2017; Mattsson, 2014; Mehrotra, 2010; Ringrose & Renold, 2010; Wells, 2011). I approach vulnerabilities as products of structural injustices rather than individual misfortunes.…”

Social work knowledges

“…For example, in her exploration of evaluation research practice, Iversen (2014) points out how some categories of people, including children, have low epistemic status in society, and these people's primary access to knowledge, even concerning their own wishes, may be disregarded by those who claim to know more (Iversen 2014, 286. See also Knezevic 2017).…”