A Cry for Care But not Justice: Embodied Vulnerabilities and the Moral Economy of Child Welfare

Abstract

This study explores the pivotal role of the body for political recognition and rights claims in child welfare “moral” interventions. I examine how the bodily figures in child welfare assessments, linking these manifestations to the concept of the moral economy of care. A sample of assessment reports from a Swedish municipality, all addressing violations of children’s bodies or integrity, are used as empirical material. I show how the psychosomatically suffering child is being best “heard” as vulnerable. I also argue that such a moral economy of care silences children’s accounts of gendered and racial injustices. Furthermore, racialized moral divides are indicated when assessments of different child bodies are considered. A concluding remark points to a need for a child welfare moral economy of social justice that responds to structural intersecting injustices in childhoods, including to those of a racialized child welfare and its individualized and symptom-oriented services.

Speaking bodies – silenced voices: Child protection and the knowledge culture of ‘evidencing’

“…The biological body has been in focus in much scholarship in the aftermath of Foucault's works on biopower and 'the politics of life' (Foucault, 2008;Rose, 1998Rose, , 2001Wells, 2011). Biopolitics has generated responses to biological bodies of 'biological sufferers' or 'psychosomatic sufferers' whose life conditions are responded to with medical, therapeutic and symptom-oriented treatments (Knezevic, 2020a;Rabaia et al, 2014;Sweis, 2017). Also foregrounded are particular techniques of 'evidencing'.…”

“…In addition, psy disciplines (Rose, 1998) and life sciences that have occupied a great role in studies and practices related to children, including child welfare theory and practice, tend to emphasise health and development (Burman, 2008;Knezevic, 2017Knezevic, , 2020aLee and Motzkau, 2011;Pettersson, 2001;Wells, 2011;Woodhead, 1999). This also applies to the Swedish child welfare and protection assessment framework, BBIC, for which developmental psychology constitutes a central theoretical point of departure, one that remained untouched although the framework itself is a 'travelling' idea (Knezevic, 2017;NBHW, 2018).…”

“…While the focus is on evidencing, it is important to note that the word 'evidence' is rarely used in these documents. However, words such as 'facts' are used and the assessments are written in a detached manner, and seemingly from the child's perspective, for instance when referring to parents as 'mum' or 'dad', although children are seldom quoted (see also Knezevic, 2020a). The quotations in the analysis below are taken from the more 'argumentative' sections of the reports where the most relevant information is outlined and summarised, that is, 'Analysis and Assessment' and 'Decision'.…”

“…The collaboration between professionals in Swedish child welfare and protection practice enables, to borrow Ong's terminology, a well-documented 'biocartography' (Ong, 2006: 195). These may involve consultations from regular examinations and documentations by child health care, (pre-) school but also psychologists (Knezevic, 2020a). In this sense, the generic and universal developing child body 'speaks' through specific documents, such as reports based on professionals' observations and medical records, but also through the absences thereof.…”

Social work knowledges

“…Here we can add that we may also need to scrutinize the knowledge base underpinning social worker responses to abused children, standardized tools or not. This point can be illustrated by the recent study by Knezevic (2019) who shows how a moral economy of care prevailing in the Swedish child welfare system depoliticizes social problems and makes psychological, neurobiological, or biomedical approaches to the body prevalent. Thus, it is the psychosomatically suffering child that is best 'heard' as vulnerable, while children's accounts of gendered and racial injustices are silenced, according to Knezevic. Veronica Ekström's book review, of the collection Responding to domestic violence.…”