Gendered bodies and the natural world

Female-identified co-researchers were more likely to depict, mention, reference, and/or use the body in their work. Not only were female co-researchers more likely to depict the body, but, when they did, they frequently included multiple media or expressions, such as collage, a series, photos with a poem, to represent the complexity and entanglement of emotions, relations, and attachments.

All these multiplicities displayed what Mol (2002) describes as the body not as a single entity, and skin not as a container, but bodies extending and connecting to other bodies, practices, and technologies, which in turn affect other bodies. Feelings and bodies were depicted in manners that align with the current data on youth in care. This includes negative emotions, and bodies most often presented as alone (in terms of other human forms). Although negative emotions play a large role in many works, hope for the future and the desire to find a place called home are also present.

Although, often, bodies are alone in human form, they are frequently expressed together with representations of the natural world. The stars, the forest, mountains, flowers, and the galaxy all came up repeatedly among indigenous and non-indigenous co-researchers in the project. Nature and vast natural forces such as the stars, the galaxy, the moon, the planet Earth, as well as representation of the focal landscapes respective to each co-researcher group in Toronto and Whitehorse, emerged as such an interesting and unexpected theme throughout this ABR project. In Whitehorse, the musician Beats Planet Kid has images of stars and a galaxy on his album cover, and Starchild Dreaming Loud used a background of stars for Positive/Negative; Michelle Charlie’s Inner Workings has a background of stars and also depicts the moon. Furthermore, the only artist who chose to identify as anonymous drew a planet, mentioned the cloud, and a higher order in the Whitehorse group piece, which was the production of academic certificates, entitled Knowledge Production. Out of the five co-researcher certificates in Knowledge Production, one depicted a wolf, one the mountains, and one the planet and clouds. What is meant by the co-researchers collectively connecting themselves to such larger and temporally vast things as earth systems, the planets, the stars, and socio-natures (Swyngedouw, 1996)? The galaxy, the planet, and the stars are vast moving constants; even mountains emerge and erode over time. Are former youth in care, through the habit of embodied transience, turning to identify with the largest spatial home possible, which is also always moving?

In research with young people concerning ideas of home, and leisure activities in a globalized and technologically connected world, an idealization of nature emerges as a place for leisure that permits quiet reflection (Abbott-Chapman & Robertson, 2001). The multiple representations of the vast expanse of the universe by co-researchers suggest a recognition of something new in this idea of embodied transience - a scalar reach that extends beyond the Earth itself to its place in the universe. This identification with outer space might be about defining home as the broadest idea of home that is always there, and always moving as well. Harvey (2000) linked the flourishing of research on and interest in the body and globalization occurring simultaneously as a way to ground discourse against the forces of neo-liberal capitalism. Through a nuanced understanding of the body as a site of resistance (Butler, 2016), the body as existing in spatial and temporal relations must be grounded, even when the concern in this case is on repeated movement of the body becoming an embodied habit. I turn next to exploring the movement aspect and expressions of embodied transience, as former youth in care are moving on individual paths, yet within unique social worlds and imaginaries.

Movement

The embodiment of transience created by frequent and repeated foster and group home placements has resulted in a spectrum of movement and emotionality related to it. Movement is not neutral for former youth in care, whether they identify as travellers or utterly detest moving and strive to stay in one place or the other. The majority of co-researchers identified frequent moves an as ongoing and problematic issue in their lives that was tangled up with relationship issues, low income, the high cost of housing in the north, and low vacancy rates. In fact, 5 out 15 of co-researchers actually moved during the total 4 weeks of fieldwork. This is an example of the financial and housing precarity many former youth in care are still existing in and navigating.

The movements of former youth in care are complex, in direction, motivation, and temporality. Seeing freedom as an ongoing practice (Bogues, 2012) within the politics of mobility (Cresswell, 2010) allows for a new way of considering the frequently moving former youth in care as not merely subjects of poverty and oppression, but active agents in their increased mobilities, living with varying plateaus of self-awareness as to why the moving of home is not an emotionally neutral or circumstantial occurrence. Movement as freedom can be freedom-from, the practice of movement as freedom from the past and forgetting (including an avoidance of emotional intimacy inherently connected to stability). The second sub-theme of movement was a hopeful freedom-to, freedom as seeking a home, a better future. With the concept of movement as freedom-from, these artists are reacting against the child welfare system and difficult life circumstances, and movement takes them away, through forgetting and spatial distance and newness. With the concept of freedom-to, hope is also strongly present: movement is not only in direct response to and directionality away from the child welfare system, but rather toward a home and a hopeful life in the future, similar to the “geography cure,” as outlined by Alcoholics Anonymous (Orrok, 1946), that a fresh start in a new place is all one needs.

Giving back and hopeful futures

Hope might be keeping some of these young people alive, and hope can also be caught up in an adventurous yet maladaptive embodied habit that protects young people while trapping them in the comfort of major upheaval and disruption. Throughout these varied relationships to hope and movement, co-researchers expressed a desire for a better life and a home in the future, not just for themselves but for youth in care overall. Giving back and community-building among former youth in care are present in a collaborative zine that was created, written to current youth in care to support them. Zine contributions noted self-care tips for current youth in care, and, in artist statements and performances, discussed the struggles and beauties of being late bloomers and assured others that they too will find their way. Former youth in care are enacting an ethics of care, creating the communities they need out of the ones that are very displaced and fragmented.

Scholars interested in an ethics of care can learn how communities such as this one are practising this theory, which can develop practical understanding, skills, and tools towards a grounded feminist ethics of care. Currently, in Canada, there is a groundswell of former youth in care activism, and that has resulted in numerous policy changes, including expanding support up to age 25 in some regions and developing tuition waivers for post-secondary support.