(“The child in the countryside has nowhere to go”: the Bolivian community’s demand for a nursery for the horticultural farms of General Pueyrredon, Buenos Aires, Argentine)

Abstract

In horticulture, the overlap between the house and the farms results in the continuous presence of children in workspaces and, although both state agents and families recognize the difficulties this entails, their interpretations of the most appropriate forms of care in this context differ sharply. While state agents link the presence of children to situations of “child labour”, members of the community believe that the most important thing for the well-being of their children is to avoid exposing them to the accidents that can occur in workplaces. These arguments about the “correct” forms of care converged in the demand for a childcare centre for the children of the collectivity which, as we will show through a qualitative analysis that includes interview analysis, reconstruction of ethnographic scenes and analysis of different documents, evidences at least three central problems in the experiences of migrants and their descendants: their care practices are under surveillance, their arguments and experiences about these practices are not taken into account by institutions and, although they are put as a focus of irregularities, no resources are mobilized to solve these problems.