In recent decades, Chile has implemented three main schemes to address the protection of the rights of children and adolescents, evidencing transitions in the logic of government and management of vulnerable children. The first scheme, developed in 1979 during the civil-military dictatorship, focused on the outsourcing of services and placement in protection centers through the National Service for Minors (SENAME), prioritizing immediate responses to problems such as abuse and abandonment. In 1990, after the transition to democracy and the ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, adjustments were made towards a comprehensive protection model, although with the persistence of structures inherited from the dictatorial period and an emphasis on administrative efficiency. In 2021, the creation of the Specialized Protection Service for Children and Adolescents (SPENA) marked an attempt at reform, incorporating daytime care modalities, quality standards, and approaches aimed at the restoration of rights. However, challenges persist in the implementation and coordination between public and private actors. These policies reflect a transition from a disciplinary logic, characterized by institutional confinement and normalization (Foucault, 1982), to a post-disciplinary logic typical of the control society, defined by fragmented and adaptive strategies (Deleuze, 1990). In this framework, disassemblies and assemblies (Raunig, 2023) become key processes that reconfigure government practices according to sociopolitical and economic contexts. The proposed research analyzes these dynamics from the studies of governmentality (Foucault, 2006; Rose, 1999), using a methodological approach based on Energici (2016). This approach is articulated around two axes: the processes of subjectivation, which explore how policies shape specific subjectivities, and the mechanisms of population regulation, which manage childhood as a vulnerable category. The corpus of analysis includes 144 state documents, issued between 1974 and 2024, such as laws, decrees, presidential messages and technical guidelines related to child protection. This research concludes that contemporary child protection policies in Chile do not consider subjectivity as a plan of action or as a logic of government, which shows an approach that prioritizes the management of numbers over attention to the individual dynamics of subjects. And although during these fifty years the State has developed new categories and ways of managing complex scenarios of child protection, the conception of "children in danger", characteristic of the protective discourse of the 19th century, has not been overcome. A notable finding is the dividual configuration of childhood, where subjects are fragmented and managed through performance metrics. In this context, contemporary assemblages operate as mechanisms that articulate previously disconnected dimensions, such as the restitution of rights and family indicators. Using the concept of disassembly, proposed by Raunig (2023), this logic reflects a political rationality that not only seeks technical cohesion, but also the legitimization of state control over children and their environment. This work warns that these practices strengthen a model where data is established as the main reason of State in the government of vulnerable children. That is, moving to this new stage of specialized surveillance has involved the construction of indicators that justify interventions in children based on performance metrics. In this transition, children have become a dividuum, that is, a type of subject that is fragmented and stripped of its individuality, and that acquires relevance only thanks to the power of the number.
| Date of Award | 19 Mar 2025 |
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| Original language | Spanish |
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| Supervisor | Jorge Leandro Castillo Sepulveda (Director) |
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