.png)
43 Views
Association for Queer Anthropology
Oral Presentation Session
Wiebe Ruijtenberg
Radboud University Nijmegen
This paper interrogates the discursive emphasis on the child’s best interest permeating parenting
encounters between Egyptian migrant parents and professionals working in the domain of child and
youth welfare in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Twenty years or so after leaving Egypt, the Egyptian
parents among whom I conducted over a year of ethnographic fieldwork narrated their migration
trajectories as a ‘sacrifice’ for their children’s future (Abrego 2014), effectively reproducing the
pervasive image of the Dutch welfare state – and in particular its education system – as a pathway
towards a better future. In turn, professionals, including teachers, readily professed a strong
commitment to help all children reach their full potential, even if austerity measures and budget cuts
impeded on their ability to do so. During their meetings, Egyptian parents and professionals
discursively found each other in their shared emphasis on the child’s (future) wellbeing. However,
below the discursive surface, the Egyptian parents often disagreed with professionals, sometimes
vehemently so. In fact, parents often feared that welfare programs and services could also work to
marginalize and exclude their children. They hardly ever shared such concerns with professionals but
instead found more indirect way to negotiate with professionals, keeping their shared discourse
alive. In this paper, I follow Amira, a mother of three, to show how this discourse of the child’s best
interest becomes an arena to negotiate the future of the child, and, ultimately, the future relations
between the Dutch state and its migrant citizens.