Challenging the Antipolitics of Regimes of Care: Young African Men in Italy Resist Precarious Futures

Abstract

In the European migration regime, unaccompanied minors, by virtue of their status as children, are conceived as deserving of care and incapable of giving care or taking care of themselves. They must then submit to the care (provided by adults) granted by the regime. In this article, I show how those exposed to the “antipolitics” of “regimes of care” outlined by Miriam Ticktin are often already engaged in what Ticktin has defined as a “decolonial feminist commons.” Using the subject of the unaccompanied minor as a lens, I demonstrate how young African men, bureaucratically labeled as such once they arrive in Italy, have been using their own collective form of care to contest their marginalized position within the unjust and violent global border regime and to hold fast to their dreams of a better future. Through focus on a specific reception center, “Giallo,” I suggest that the care provided therein, together with the young men’s interaction with this space, creates room for the young men to maneuver to contest antipolitics and maintain hope for a better future. In presenting such an argument, I recognize the asymmetrical power relations and structural inequalities inherent in care, but here I focus on moments of resistance and the alternative practices of radical care that the young men practice despite, through, and alongside unequal power structures. In doing so, I explicate the ongoing value of feminist concepts of care and caring, in particular when in dialogue with critical race and queer scholarship.