Dena Aufseeser, University of Maryland
My research focuses on understanding and re-conceptualizing child poverty in a range of spaces. My most recent project examines child poverty in Peru, looking at how street children in Lima and Cusco experience, define, and respond to that poverty. Children are frequently considered outside of international politics. However, dominant understandings of childhood are actually intricately connected to narratives of international development and poverty reduction strategies. And children themselves actively negotiate the constraints that they face. A focus on the everyday lives of street children, who in many ways are on the margins of society, can deepen understandings of the reproduction of dominant discourses about development, poverty, and childhood. Young people’s lives show the importance of centering care in both understandings of poverty and responses to that poverty. Other related topics central to my research include debates about the uses of public space, the role of education and child labor in promoting or hindering social mobility, and links between knowledge, power, and the re-production of poverty.
Contact: denaa@uw.edu
Leave a Reply