Moving children: the social implications of Andean children circulation

Authors

  • Jessaca B. Leinaweaver

Keywords:

Peru, Andes, adoption, kinship, family, fosterage, childhood

Abstract

It is not unusual in the Andes to relocate children between houses, one of many survival and betterment strategies carried out amid stark social and economic inequalities. These “child circulations” both produce and strengthen kinship and are central to local family-making efforts. My ethnographic investigation of child circulations in Ayacucho, Peru grounds a critical assessment of Peru’s globalized adoption system, which implicitly denaturalizes the parenting of poor, indigenous Peruvians.

Published

2012-03-21