What might a decolonial perspective on child protection look like? Lessons from Kenya

Nyamu, Irene K; Wamahiu, Sheila P

doi:10.1177/09075682221111782

Cited by 2 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…Furthermore, distinguishing between generations within families was also key to colonial policy interventions seeking to save and civilize (Cunneen, 2008). Most notably, child removal policies were in operation in multiple colonies, and for many decolonial scholars, effectively remain ongoing given the disproportionate numbers of indigenous children taken into state care (Mohamud et al, 2021; Nyamu and Wamahiu, 2022; Schmidt, 2022).…”

Section: A Decolonial Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gendered and Racialised Epistemological Injustice in FGM-safeguarding

Carver

Pantazis

Karlsen

et al. 2023

Social & Legal Studies

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This paper explores FGM-safeguarding in the UK through a decolonial lens. Based on an analysis of the development of law and policy relating to ‘Female Genital Mutilation’ in the UK alongside data collected in focus groups with people of ethnic Somali heritage living in Bristol, we argue that the current legislation and policies, as well as their delivery, are steeped in colonial Othering. We demonstrate that legislative and policy approaches operate through a gendered and generational binary in which non-White mothers are othered as migrants (regardless of citizenship status) for whom anachronistic culture is deemed determinative, whilst their daughters are claimed as British. In this construction, ‘FGM’ operates as the symbolic marker that designates un/belonging: the uncircumcised girl is rescuable and claimed as ‘one of us’, whilst the circumcised mother is considered a mutilated political subject for whom belonging is foreclosed.

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Section: A Decolonial Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gendered and Racialised Epistemological Injustice in FGM-safeguarding

Carver

Pantazis

Karlsen

et al. 2023

Social & Legal Studies

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“…Hegemonic narratives of western‐produced aberrative southern childhoods ‘can be countered by presenting more ontologically informed alternatives that legitimise and render African childhoods accurately and re‐centre the previously marginalised knowledge of the ‘other's childhoods' (Nyamu & Wamahiu, 2022, p. 424). Child marriages have been constructed as a Global South pathology.…”

Section: Decolonising Child Marriagesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Decolonising and decriminalising child marriage in Africa

Nyamutata

2023

Sociology Compass

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Child marriages, often attributed to culture and gender inequality, are prevalent across Africa. Several countries have moved to criminalise the practice. At the core of the criminalisation debate are the fundamental tensions between statutory (state) law on the one hand, and religious and customary law on the other. The growing momentum towards punishment, targeted almost invariably at male offenders, is meant to address the conflict between cultural practices that lead to child marriage and the protection of children's rights. However, some countries have not criminalised child marriage. Thus, the outlawry of child marriages is not universal on the continent. The agitation towards criminalisation—I describe this as ‘popular punitvism’ ‐ as a panacea, is animated by Western penological justifications, principally, deterrence. However, Western criminological and penological theories may not fully account for a phenomenon in other social and geographical spaces. The paper argues for decolonising and decriminalising child marriages in Africa but not legalising it.

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What might a decolonial perspective on child protection look like? Lessons from Kenya

Cited by 2 publications

References 29 publications

Gendered and Racialised Epistemological Injustice in FGM-safeguarding

Gendered and Racialised Epistemological Injustice in FGM-safeguarding

Decolonising and decriminalising child marriage in Africa

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