Date: TBD

Time: TBD

CFP 21 - Regular: Weaponization of Child Welfare
Room: TBD

Sponsors: Crime and Justice
Sociology, Social Work, and Social Welfare

Organizers: Miltonette Olivia Craig, Sam Houston State University
Denae J. Cook, University of Utah

Presider: Denae J. Cook, University of Utah

Description: 

This session examines how child welfare systems often operate as tools of control and surveillance to regulate lifeworlds. Within contemporary child welfare systems, marginalized families and BIPOC communities are disproportionately surveilled, investigated, and separated. Under the guise of “protection,” policies and practices dismantle kinship networks, impose white, middle-class family norms, and punish families for systemic inequities beyond their control. Panelists demonstrate how these patterns reflect colonial practices and dominant carceral systems while overlooking community-driven solutions. Discussants explore ways to resist harmful colonialist practices and imagine new approaches to child and family well-being rooted in dignity, solidarity, and collective care.

Papers:

“‘I Wouldn’t Want Your Job’: Child Protection as Dirty Work,” Keith R. Johnson, Independent Scholar

“Disparate Child Welfare Responses to Sexual Abuse Cases involving AI/AN Children: Context, Actions, and Outcomes,” Paul D. Steele, The University of New Mexico, Emeritus

“From Care to Compliance: Mothers’ Everyday Resistance to Digital Welfare Bureaucracy,” Tasnim Binte Maksud, University of Houston

“Girls, Take Care and Boys Be a Man: Gendered Interventions in Policing ‘Delinquency’ among Latina Youth,” Alexia Palomino-Cortez, University of Illinois Chicago

“Governing the Poor: Poverty, Perception, and Child Welfare Reunification: A Scoping Review of Poverty Bias in Child Welfare between 2015–2025,” Denae J. Cook, University of Utah

“Racial Violence in the Name of Care: Neoliberalism, Carcerality, and the Afterlives of MacLaren Hall,” Akhila L. Ananth, California State University, Los Angeles

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