Yusuke’s story: Journey, precarity, and coming of age in care
Yusuke’s story: Journey, precarity, and coming of age in care
Ethnography, Ahead of Print.
Child protection systems displace children’s social lives, marking an important space for understanding personhood and well-being. Drawing on yearlong fieldwork in Japan’s child welfare sector, I explore how one person’s—Yusuke’s—daily movements in and out of institutional care form a wide itinerary of social, affective, and imaginative encounters. His journeys of being-in-care index a lived present and embodied past, sometimes invoking both at once in ambiguous, unplanned ways. Considering the broader trajectory of care outcomes, I suggest how the system injects new forms of social precarity into children’s lives by way of forced and messy journeys into care, illustrating how children are remade as children of the state. The quest of seeking, listening to, and retelling marginalized stories contextualizes new possibilities for understanding the relationship between care, politics, and space. Yusuke’s story encourages an openness towards ethnographic portraiture with people who are ill, disabled, or have faced adversity.
Child protection systems displace children’s social lives, marking an important space for understanding personhood and well-being. Drawing on yearlong fieldwork in Japan’s child welfare sector, I explore how one person’s—Yusuke’s—daily movements in and out of institutional care form a wide itinerary of social, affective, and imaginative encounters. His journeys of being-in-care index a lived present and embodied past, sometimes invoking both at once in ambiguous, unplanned ways. Considering the broader trajectory of care outcomes, I suggest how the system injects new forms of social precarity into children’s lives by way of forced and messy journeys into care, illustrating how children are remade as children of the state. The quest of seeking, listening to, and retelling marginalized stories contextualizes new possibilities for understanding the relationship between care, politics, and space. Yusuke’s story encourages an openness towards ethnographic portraiture with people who are ill, disabled, or have faced adversity.