Description: Youth Circulations: Tracing the real and imagined circulations of global youth
Youth Circulations is a nexus for research, art and activism around youth mobility and the politics of representation. Born of a shared frustration over media portrayals of young migrants and their families, we offer here a curated collection of these images and, in response, a meaningful and necessarily global critique.
In recent years, we’ve seen an expansion in the size and a proliferation in the types of detention facilities for im/migrant children. In the US, facilities range from 500 to 5000 beds in tent cities, military bases, stadiums, convention centers, fairgrounds and converted warehouses. Experts concur, the detention of children—no matter how brief—can result in high rates of posttraumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation. Detention also perpetuates the historical and intergenerationa
Just as migrant youth are decontextualized in image and text, so too are youths' own selves. Rather than serve to respect the privacy and confidentiality of the individual child, the disembodied images powerfully suggest a fragmentation of identity. At the same time, depictions of incomplete or partial bodies coincide with an emphasis of children in the process of becoming , rather than focusing on being social agents in their own right.
Maurice R. Magaña, PhD – Associate Professor, Mexican American Studies, University of Arizona
Maurice R. Magaña, PhD – Associate Professor, Mexican American Studies, University of Arizona
David Barillas Chon | Indigenous and Latinx Scholar