The orphanage as an institution of coercive mobility

Bibliographic Data

ID4138845
AuthorsTom Disney (0000-0002-6080-7709, University of Nottingham, corresponding author)
Year2017
Volume49
Issue8
Pages1905-1921
Publication date2017-08-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEnvironment and Planning A Economy and Space (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0308-518X • E-ISSN: 1472-3409
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0308518x17711181
OpenAlexW2620015419
LanguageEN
Citations received18
References cited42

This article reconsiders children's mobilities through the relationship between care and control in the context of Russia's disability orphanages. Drawing upon the lens of carceral mobilities, the article challenges the dominant conceptualisations of children's mobilities as 'independent' or necessarily intertwined with notions of 'wellbeing'. Instead this piece draws upon ethnographic research into the Russian disability orphanage system to present three typologies of multi-scalar carceral mobilities which children experience in this context; firstly as a form of spatial segregation and containment, secondly as a form of punishment and finally enforced stillness and restraint as a form of care. In doing so it provides new insights into the nature of the everyday for children in restricted institutional environments, largely absent from the wider geographical literature. Through the lens of carceral mobility this article provides a more nuanced geographical reading of the orphanage beyond an environment variously understood to harm or problematically to provide shelter, but as an institution enmeshed in biopolitical processes of power and control

Criminology · Ethnography · Geography · Harm · Institution · Mobilities · Residential care · Social science · Sociology · Anthropology · Child Welfare and Adoption · Children's Rights and Participation · Gender Studies · Psychology · Sex work and related issues · Social Psychology · Gerontology