The Wrestlers: the tactics and practices of care of young African ‘unaccompanied minors’ in Italy

Drawing upon data captured through multi-modal ethnography with young African men who have made the perilous, illegalised, journey across the Mediterranean Sea to Italy, this chapter critically explores how they utilise their status as ‘unaccompanied minors’ to construct a ‘better future’ as they transition to adulthood in the Italian reception system. Using the transition to adulthood as a lens, I problematise notions of care and who can do the caring for these young men, revealing how they perform the ‘good child’ as both a tactic and a reciprocal response to the care they receive, mirroring in their actions the dualities between care and control inherent within the reception system. Building particularly on the chapters by Rosen, Heidbrink and Hoang, I unravel how ‘crisis’ narratives are utilised to provide temporally limited moralistic forms of care to these young men as children, and how they practise their own forms of care to access support which supersedes the border of childhood. The chapter then contributes to knowledge of the under researched area of children’s own caring practices.