Paper short abstract:

This paper brings in the concept of kinning to the anthropology of disaster response and migration. It does so by studying intimate relationships formed between the Chernobyl children from Belarus and their host families in Italy within the humanitarian programme of child recuperation abroad.

Paper long abstract:

This paper brings in the concept of kinning from the anthropology of adoption and care work to the anthropology of disaster response and migration. It does so by studying intimate relationships formed between the Chernobyl children from Belarus and their host families in Italy within the humanitarian programme of child recuperation abroad. It is argued that these intimate relationships can be understood as kinning; kinning implies an intimate disaster response, a process of fostering transnational relations on people-to-people level during humanitarian assistance independently of non-state, state, and supranational institutions. The manuscript shows that kinning with host families in childhood resulted in education migration of the grown up Chernobyl children to Italy in adulthood. The essay concludes that rather than placing disaster response and migration into the anthropology of the suffering, it is worth exploring these phenomena through the anthropology of the good.