Precarious Childhood

Abstract

Judith Butler argues that when we start to ask critical questions about which socio-political contexts may make human lives more viable to flourish and which may not, we find that some live lives outside a frame furnished by a norm that does not recognize them as a life and hence impossible for us to imagine, and to grieve and mourn their loss. This chapter uses Butler’s ideas on precariousness and liveability to discuss the social and political conditions and cultural contexts of children in poverty. It first outlines Butler’s notions of precariousness and the precarity of life as the violent contexts in which certain lives are not recognised. Next, it examines how the framing and reframing of poverty according to the notion of ‘liveability’ helps improve the social and ecological wellbeing of those living in poverty in ASEAN member states (AMS). Finally, it investigates why the precariousness for children born into poverty in AMS continues to rise, in spite of economic growth and political pledge to protect the rights of children by examining the context of child exploitation. It argues that the idea of ‘childhood’ as we know it does not exist in some of these AMS and this contributes to the increased precariousness for children born into poverty. These children are only able to make their lives liveable by embracing the absence of ‘childhood’ and are only recognized as living valuable lives when they contribute to the family income. This requires community effort and political will to challenge the framing of children as resource and assert the right of children to have a right to live viable lives.