Children’s Personal Data: Discursive Legitimation Strategies of Private Residential Care Institutions on the Kenyan Coast

Njeri Chege

doi:10.3390/socsci7070114

Abstract

This article looks at how charity organizations running private residential child care institutions on the Kenyan coast make use of the personal data of children in their care, as a means of securing and maintaining the support of donors from the global North. The strategy involves the online showcasing of children’s profiles—individual children’s photos, accompanied by their names, birth dates, annual development, and their emotion-inducing personal and/or family histories are posted on the respective organizations’ websites, making them accessible to the global public. I analyze and problematize this practice, positing that while it explicitly serves fund-raising purposes and is motivated by the search for cost-effective fund-raising-oriented communication, at a more implicit level, it is equally a strategy used to discursively legitimize the organizations and their child ‘rescue’ activities, within the contemporary climate of deinstitutionalization. This strategy results in a violation of children’s rights; has ethical implications; and is not without consequences for the concerned children’s well-being.

Highlights

Studies conducted in psychology, social work, and medicine, among other disciplines, have shown the negative impact institutional child-rearing has on children’s emotional, social, cognitive, and intellectual development1
Research and press reports in numerous Southern countries have shown that today, a large majority of children living in residential care institutions are not necessarily there because they genuinely lack parents and/or extended family
Most often their institutionalization results from interrelated factors, notably, family crises, poverty, and social and political upheavals2. These considerations have led to a shift in thinking as the work of child-centered international non-governmental organizations (INGOs), intergovernmental organizations, and that of medical and academic researchers, has emphasized the need to bring to an end the up-bringing of children in institutional settings

Summary

Introduction

Social work, and medicine, among other disciplines, have shown the negative impact institutional child-rearing has on children’s emotional, social, cognitive, and intellectual development. Research and press reports in numerous Southern countries have shown that today, a large majority of children living in residential care institutions are not necessarily there because they genuinely lack parents and/or extended family. Most often their institutionalization results from interrelated factors, notably, family crises, poverty, and social and political upheavals. Most often their institutionalization results from interrelated factors, notably, family crises, poverty, and social and political upheavals2 Over the years, these considerations have led to a shift in thinking as the work of child-centered international non-governmental organizations (INGOs), intergovernmental organizations, and that of medical and academic researchers, has emphasized the need to bring to an end the up-bringing of children in institutional settings.

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