Classed landscapes of care and belonging : guardianships of unaccompanied minors

Drawing on interviews with guardians of unaccompanied minor foreigners in Belgium, this article investigates the inequalities underlying the care relationships between guardians and their pupils. It does so by analysing the beliefs and practices of the guardians and considers how they both resist and reproduce dominant discourses on the minors’ presumed needs and rights in terms of care and protection. First, this article examines the way these guardians negotiate middle-class imageries of ‘sacred’ childhood that are featured in exclusionary conceptualizations of humanitarianism. Second, it explores the role of an ethics of care in how the guardians navigate between a desire for standardization and the interpersonal care relationships with their pupils. I argue that the guardianship work does not only add to the guardians’ constructions of middle-class subjectivity, but that it also provides them with a unique perspective that tends to change the way they see ‘just’ care.

Jaar van publicatie:2017

BOF-keylabel:ja

IOF-keylabel:ja

BOF-publication weight:0.1

CSS-citation score:2

Auteurs:National

Authors from:Higher Education

Toegankelijkheid:Open