Circulation of children. Between state actions and popular initiatives

Abstract

In this article, from the reconstruction and in-depth analysis of an ethnographic situation which is a part of an investigation in a Local Service of Protection of Children’s Rights of the Buenos Aires conurban, I try to characterize some significant dimensions of the contemporary modalities of childhood management in the era of their rights. I reconstruct here interactions that, within the framework of normative and moral horizons that ponder “co-responsibility” and “community participation” in the “restitution of children’s rights”, expose particular imbrications in which certain state actions are overprinted on a repertoire of popular initiatives linked to relationships of mutual aid and proximity. Social practices such as the circulation of children expose a deeply complex and hybrid configuration, in which state productivity and popular initiatives; formality and informality; durability and mutability; adoption, guards and fosterage, converge to varying degrees