Belong, but don't be-long: Narratives of youths sponsored through former Participants of the Live-In Caregiver Program

This thesis considers the impacts of the Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP) on children 'left behind', as they are depicted in the Global Care Chains (GCC) literature. I interview youths who were sponsored for permanent resident status by former participants of the LCP. I use the concept of multidirectional care to reimagine Western constructs of normative childhood. I write youths, whose childhoods are informed by colonialism, migration, and economic uncertainty, into normative theorizations of child development that assume white families as ideal. I connect my participants experiences to critical debates of childhood innocence, including analyses of race, class, and gender, to unravel how some children are not protected by innocence. This process allows childhood experiences wrought under globalization and colonization to start writing themselves into normative theories of childhood.