Fixity and fluidity – circulations, children, and childhood

Abstract

Circulation is often essentialized as a prescribed, limited, and closed form of movement, ‘fixed’ in origins and destination, in intent and outcome. However, circulation may also be understood as a form of flexible movement, non-fixity or multiple stabilities (the act of living life in multiple physical and social locations). This special issue of the journal Childhood examines a plurality of circulations as metaphors and catalysts for unsettling children and childhood as fixed ontological categories. On one hand, contributors’ attention to a phenomenology of circulations, children, and childhood identifies ‘fixed’ expected or projected developmental trajectories assumed by such adult actors as state workers, child welfare experts, lawyers, law enforcement and biomedical professionals, or adoption professionals to underpin a ‘normal childhood’ (such as that which might be grounded in a nuclear family, with an assumed fixed and stable locus of belonging). On the other hand, it identifies and literally subjectifies children who deviate from this model or ideal. Using spatial metaphors to deconstruct childhood as a fixed category ultimately yields important models for thinking about how children and childhood literally and figuratively perform as markers for both stasis and fluidity in our daily lives.

Contested Childhoods: Growing up in Migrancy

“…The book aims to highlight the connections between such mobilities as part of the larger migration patterns. In doing so, it has much in common with the special issue of Childhood on the circulation of children, mentioned above (Stryker and Yngvesson 2013), indicating that the two fields of study may be converging.…”

“…The issue "Fixity and Fluidity-Circulations, Children, and Childhood" was edited by U.S. anthropologists Stryker and Yngvesson (2013). They used the metaphor of circulation (not synonymous with migration, but partly overlapping) as a way to illuminate childhood as a form of "non-determinative, social becoming", where children are seen as navigators through unstable social landscapes.…”

Childhoods in Policy: A Critical Analysis of National Child Protection Policy in the Philippines

“…Within this framework, children are understood as competent social actors with valuable perspectives and knowledge, and as rights holders, who actively engage with their social world (Aries, ; Corsaro, ; Mayall, ; Qvortrup, ). Core to these understandings is the plurality of experiences of ‘childhoods’, rather than a singular phenomenon (Morrow, ), highlighting that ‘childhoods’ change across time and place, and depend on status and power (Stryker and Yngvesson, ).…”

Imageries of family and nation: A comparative analysis of transnational adoption and care for unaccompanied minors in Belgium

“…Drawing on recently emerging literature that compares transnational adoption with other types of migration (Ballucci and Dorow, 2014; De Graeve, 2015b; Leinaweaver, 2013; Leiter et al, 2006; Stryker and Yngvesson, 2013; Van Wichelen, 2015) and on recent work on exceptionalism in European immigration policies (Fassin, 2001, 2005; Judge, 2010; Malkki, 1995; Nyers, 2006; Pupavac, 2008), we explore the care for the two groups of minors (1) as being part of immigration policy and (2) as concerning humanitarian exceptions within this immigration policy. We draw on Howell’s (2006) concept of ‘kinning’ to call attention to the close relationship between family and nation and the intricate interplay between views on immigrant integration, child development ideologies that consider children as malleable cultural beings ‘in the making’ and beliefs in an essential national identity, linked to physical appearance.…”