Systemic vulnerability: Towards a theoretical framework for identifying institutional failures that violate rights

Abstract

Since the return to democracy in Chile in 1990, public policies for institutionalized children have progressively adopted the theory of vulnerability, with disastrous results. To expose the violence implied in the vulnerability theory, the article proposes a framework composed of the concept of epistemological violence, the theory of recognition, and the feminist psychological theory of institutional trauma to analyze and interpret public policies for children. This theoretical approach allows us to unveil how the institutional use of vulnerability has become a standardized and naturalized mechanism of violence that (re)produces the trauma the public policies seek to interrupt. In this way, we make visible a chain of failures that provoke severe traumas that drastically reduce their capacity for agency and future opportunities, especially in institutionalized girls and adolescents. The theoretical proposal contributes to future research about social politics, systems, and programs of childhood protection based on rights. We conclude by identifying some limitations and theoretical challenges.