Entre la confianza y la transformación: modalidades de intervención social sobre la niñez en riesgo en el marco de la protección integral de derechos en Argentina

Abstract

This paper is part of a study intended to elucidate the current modalities of social intervention on children at risk in Argentina, as part of what is known as child protection and from a rights-based approach. I attempt to comprehend these modalities of intervention by focusing on the actions of the institutional agents of a state organism for the protection of children’s rights in a mid-range area of Buenos Aires. The material presented here stems from an ethnographic and narrative approach to the actions carried out by these agents in relation to the families with which they interact, in order to access some of the significant schemes that frame them. I conducted my fieldwork in 2018, during a five-month internship in the organization, using participant observation as the main research technique. I argue that the trust that permeates the bond between state agents and the families targeted by the interventions is conceived as a moral value that conveys the instructive work carried out, fundamentally, on women-mothers. This characteristic does not serve to make relationships more flexible, but rather reestablishes itself to stylize control and surveillance mechanisms. At the same time, families make use of available institutional rhetoric as a way of translating their social experience into the language of rights, thus effecting the expected transformation. This work shows how current models of intervention involving children and their families incorporate new elements such as trust and affection, which, however, are woven with enduring power mechanisms typical of the scope of the state’s protective services. It also discusses the place of families in the interaction with state agents to enable an understanding of their actions based on the use and appropriation of the language of rights.

Keywords

• childhood
• childhood rights
• risk
• social interventions
• state organism
• trust