Stigmatized: In/Forming identities of children in Care

Abstract

Stigma devalues, discriminates, and magnifies social inequalities. For children in care, who have far worse educational outcomes than children who are not in care, stigma negatively effects the others’ perceptions, as well as the children’s perceptions of themselves. This paper is drawn from a larger research project which considered the ways in which school leaders supported children in care in their schools and the barriers they experienced in doing so. Engaging with the interviews of school leaders and drawing on poststructural theory, I critically explore schooling discourses related to being in care and how these in/form the subjectivities of children in care. The analysis illustrates how being in care inscribes discourses of deficiency, erasure, and vulnerability, and as a stigmatized identity marker enacts inequalities and exclusions by and within school. The discourses related to being in care magnify children’s precarity, determining certain norms of recognition including who cannot be—or are not allowed to be—seen as student-subjects.