Passos pequenos

infâncias migrantes na ficção literária

Abstract

This article examines the epistemic role of literary imagination in shaping plural images of migrant and refugee children and in critiquing humanitarian frameworks that tend to portray them under the sign of passivity and tutelage. Drawing on a UNICEF photograph and the poem Vietnam by Wisława Szymborska, it discusses visual and discursive strategies that silence childhood in contexts of displacement, as well as possibilities for disrupting such frameworks. The reflection advances an interdisciplinary dialogue with philosophy, human rights, anthropology, and literary studies, informed by data from an outreach project conducted with Venezuelan students in Rio de Janeiro. In this context, reading mediation enabled the emergence of “minor archives”, fragmentary narratives, memories and affects that escape official refugee records and challenge hegemonic images of migrant childhood. This material is brought into dialogue with a corpus composed of three picturebooks: Eloisa and the Creepy Crawlers, The Suitcase, and Story Boat. By privileging minor points of view, the article suggests that children’s literature can constitute an ethical counter-scene capable of interrogating victimization and recognizing children as desiring political subjects and effective interlocutors in the contemporary world.