Paper Short Abstract:

Based on fieldwork in a state-run childcare institution for the protection of underage mothers/pregnant children in India, the paper investigates how the logics of incarceration, welfare, and morality coalesce in the processes of institutional care.

Paper Abstract:

The Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015, was passed by the Indian Parliament in 2015 to replace the rhetoric of juvenile delinquency, and focus on the ‘social re-integration’ of children at risk. The Act identifies children who are homeless, implicated in child labour, or victims of trafficking as ‘children in need of care and protection’ (CNCP). To this effect, childcare institutions (CCIs) have been set up to house these children till they become adults. Underage mothers – pregnant children under the age of 18 – find themselves in these institutions because they are either treated as victims of statutory rape, or because they tend to run away from home under fear of parental chastisement. Several young girls are also committed to these institutions by their parents as ‘punishment’ for being sexually active or to avoid the stigma of having a pregnant child at home. The paper reflects on the narratives of caregivers, social workers and administrative staff in one such institution to argue that care emerges as a mediation between discipline, punishment, and rehabilitation. The paper offers critical insight into how an economy of care is engendered by reconfiguring the relationship between the individual body, the family, and the law: the state takes on a quasi-parental role in its supervision of these individuals, and concomitantly, the family emerges as a quasi-judicial authority in matters pertaining to the arbitration of crime, morality, and sexuality, obfuscating the relationship between the realms of intimacy and law, and care and incarceration.