Küresel Çocukluk Rejimlerinin Popülist Siyasetle Kesişimi: UNICEF Dünya Çocuklarının Durumu (2000–2025) Raporlarının Eleştirel Bir Analizi

Öz

Bu makale, UNICEF’in 2000–2025 dönemine yayılan Dünya Çocuklarının Durumu raporlarını analiz ederek çocukluğun küresel ölçekte nasıl tanımlandığını, temsil edildiğini ve yönetildiğini incelemektedir. Çocukluğun biyopolitik, teknik ve aile-merkezli bir çerçevede yeniden üretildiği bu raporlar, görünürde hak temelli bir yaklaşım sunsa da çoğu zaman çocukluğu risk, kırılganlık ve hedeflenebilir nüfus kategorileri üzerinden düzenlemektedir. Çalışma, çocukluğun bu biçimde kurgulanmasının sağ-popülist rejimlerin aileci, güvenlikçi ve performatif siyaset anlayışlarıyla nasıl kesiştiğini ortaya koymaktadır. Bulgular, raporların özellikle kriz söylemleri, ebeveynlik odaklı moralizasyon, dijital gözetim, demografik gelecekçilik ve çok boyutlu yoksulluk temaları etrafında çocukluğu apolitikleştiren bir yönetimsellik ürettiğini göstermektedir. Bu çerçeve, çocuk yoksulluğunu ve eşitsizliği depolitize ederek aile davranışlarına bağlayan, çocuğu “korunması gereken kırılgan özne” biçiminde sunarak gözetimci politikaları meşrulaştıran ve ulusal performans siyasetini güçlendiren popülist stratejilere zemin hazırlamaktadır. UNICEF raporlarının eleştirel analizi, küresel çocuk politikalarının yalnızca sosyal refah alanını değil, çağdaş popülist siyasetlerin, ulusu, aileyi ve geleceği nasıl yeniden kurguladığını anlamak açısından da önemli bir gösterge sunmaktadır.

Anahtar Kelimeler

• Çocukluk rejimleri;
• popülist siyaset;
• biyopolitika;
• UNICEF raporları; dijital gözetim

Governing Childhood in the Age of Populism: A Critical Reading of UNICEF’s Global Childhood Reports (2000-2025)

Öz

This article examines UNICEF’s State of the World’s Children reports published between 2000 and 2025 in order to analyze how childhood is framed, represented, and governed within global policy discourse. While the reports appear to adopt a rights-based approach, they increasingly construct childhood through categories of risk, vulnerability, and manageability, positioning children as measurable populations rather than political subjects. The study demonstrates how these representations intersect with the family-centered, moralizing, security-oriented, and performance-driven logic of contemporary right-wing populist regimes. Findings show that across the twenty-five–year period, UNICEF frames childhood around five dominant axes: biological risk and survival, parental responsibility and moralization, digital surveillance, demographic futurism, and multidimensional poverty. These framings depoliticize structural inequalities, shift responsibility from state to family, legitimize surveillance and control practices under the guise of “child protection,” and provide a discursive foundation for populist performances of care and authority. The critical analysis of these global reports reveals that childhood is increasingly governed as a biopolitical, technical, and future-oriented domain—one that not only structures child welfare policies but also reinforces broader populist imaginaries of nation, family, and societal order.

Anahtar Kelimeler

• Childhood regimes
• populism;
• biopolitics;
• UNICEF; digital surveillance

Kaynakça

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