Theorizing ‘Surplus Populations’ in racial capitalism through juvenile justice

Wells, Karen (2023) Theorizing ‘Surplus Populations’ in racial capitalism through juvenile justice. In: Balagopalan, S. and Wall, J. and Wells, Karen (eds.) The Bloomsbury Handbook of Theories in Childhood Studies. Bloomsbury Handbooks. London, UK: Bloomsbury, pp. 309-321. ISBN 9781350263840.

Abstract

The concept of ‘surplus population’ explains how child welfare functions in the context of racial capitalism to cultivate and develop the productive capacities of children to ensure the development of a productive adult. Productive here simply means activity that adds value to privately owned capital. It does not mean: active, alive, creative, generative, dynamic, social, etc. Surplus population is that part of the population that is permanently surplus to the needs of capital and outside of the logic of productivity for capital. It does not, of course, mean that people are surplus for one another or that they are outside of community and family or that their lives are intrinsically useless or lack value. Surplus population is a concept specifically tied to how capitalism values life. This chapter argues that when the imagined future of the child falls outside of the scope of a productive future and locates the child now and in the future as part of a surplus population, juvenile justice and other mechanisms of abandoning and containing children and exposing them to premature death are mobilized.

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