The market plays a significant, though often overlooked, role in children’s living conditions. For a long time, the labour market included children’s work, and the market has been - and remains - an arena for recruiting foster families and institutional placements for children who, for various reasons, have not been considered able to live with their parents. In several of my research projects, I examine how market mechanisms have shaped the construction of childhoods and the conditions under which children and families have lived. I also study how altruistic and solidaristic actions towards children in war and crisis have been mobilised and organised. Such efforts constitute another aspect of the economy surrounding children.
Listening for Abuse
A further theme in my research concerns how experiences of abuse in out-of-home care have been addressed historically, in the present, and in political projects of recognition and reparation around the world. A historical perspective highlights how the past may remain in the present, but also how difficult it can be to establish active listening to children and young people in out-of-home care. By bringing together the study of the history of children in care with research on politics of redress, I examine questions that are relevant both to contemporary socio-political debate and to the ethical self-reflection of scholars in child and childhood studies.
