Subaltern in the (un)making: children’s passivity in Mindanao

How are children socially positioned as subordinate actors in conflict-affected societies? While scholarship on children and youth has increasingly highlighted their agency and participation in peacebuilding, less attention has been paid to the everyday processes through which children become marginalised as social and political actors. This article examines the social production and partial unmaking of child subalternity in Zone 6, a community in Northern Mindanao, Philippines, indirectly affected by the legacies of armed conflict. Drawing on the concept of ‘subaltern in the (un)making’, we argue that children are socialised into positions of unequal recognition through everyday interactions within families, schools, and communities, where adult authority is normalised and children’s contributions are valued primarily for their utility. We identify three mechanisms through which child subalternity is reproduced: (1) structural hierarchies that privilege adult needs and authority, (2) everyday interactions that normalise obedience and unequal recognition, and (3) children’s adaptive responses to these conditions. Simultaneously, some youth gradually engage in the unmaking of subalternity through subtle acts of avoidance, negotiation, and self-assertion. We show how conflict legacies become embedded in everyday social relations and contribute to the reproduction of subordinate subject positions beyond sites of direct violence.