Childhood housed in alternative care spaces: life and death administration

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to deepen the study of the Social Assistance Centers identified in the national territory as spaces of risk, where violence against children and adolescents is expressed under the cloak of invisibility and impunity, based on the analysis of a national geo-referenced and in the light of the analytics of power. The narrative methodological approach supports the qualitative research process, resorting to the use of oral, interactive, and written techniques that document the violence exercised against children who are housed in alternative care spaces. Among the most important findings of the study is the blurring of children and adolescents who, for distinct reasons, become the responsibility of the government and are housed in institutions, the ineffectiveness of the state that resorts to the technology of the power of “Rights and the best interests of the child” and the commodification, commodification, and disposability that makes some Social Assistance Centers into mass models of life and death administration.