Institutional borders, revolutionary imaginings and the becoming-adult of the child

Abstract

Questions surrounding children's capacities and abilities to exert responsible agency have increasingly become a topic of interest in studies of children. Using an empirical example from a Family Treatment Drug Court (FTDC) case in the San Diego area, we discuss how a child entangled in familial circumstances of drug addiction actively exerts care and responsibility in and for the continual remaking of different familial and institutional boundaries and spatialities. In the process, we argue, can be found the becoming-adult of the child: a movement of becoming understood not through developmental stages or forms, but through what children do and are able to do.