Description
Modernity constructed childhood in a very specific way with the development of laws, norms, organisations, meanings and scientific studies on people in a young age. The concept of children, as an object of control and discipline of the modern childhood, has its clear definition connected with a ‘becoming’, immaturity, innocence, purity and in need of adult protection. This modern way to construct childhood and children was and continues to be criticised by Childhood Studies scholars that analyse children as a socially and politically category and children as subjects of their own experiences. Although the modern concepts of childhood and children have been questioned by IR scholars as well, contemporary global politics uses this modern discourse of childhood as a strategy of remediation or demands for retribution. We can observe this in images of refugee and migrant children as the aesthetics of crisis in Global South. Childhood is a dispositif of power and technology of control through which global politics (re)produces discourses of subjection and erasure of lived experiences of children. We discuss childhood as a dispositif of power. This concept (re)produces the imaginary of children as a singular category that ignores experiences of ‘deviant children’ that do not fit the idea of ‘normal children’. Adopting the case of global migration politics, we analyse the national children as a the ‘normal children” and the ‘deviant children’ as the migrant children. We will develop this argument in three phases: first, we will discuss childhood as a dispositif of power in the global contemporary politics especially in the area of migration politics. Secondly, we will discuss the categories of ‘normal children’ and ‘deviant children’ as a technology of control. Finally, we will analyse how children’s migration experiences can be seen as a counter argument to the discourse (re)produced by the dispositive of childhood.
