Childhood on the Frontiers of the Geontopolitical State

This manuscript examines the intersection of childhood, race, and state power through the framework of geontopolitics, where the boundaries between life and nonlife, human and inhuman, are continuously negotiated. Drawing from Fanon’s powerful reflections on colonial violence, it analyzes how children, particularly those at the margins, become key targets of state control under biopolitical and necropolitical regimes. Central to this examination is the argument that the constructed binary between adult and child facilitates the violence of geontopower, enabling the state to treat marginalized children as non-life or “less-than-human,” thereby justifying their exploitation and exclusion. The manuscript is organized into sections addressing mass incarceration within the U.S. prison system, the precarious realities of undocumented families navigating the extended border, and the systemic exclusion of Indigenous children. It also explores the commercial sexual exploitation of children, the racialization of youth criminalization, and how exploitation, arrests, and incarceration are positioned as birthrights for some. By examining system avoidance as a form of non-compliance and resistance, the manuscript critically engages with colonial legacies, offering a nuanced analysis of how the geontopolitical state continues to shape childhood in the contemporary world.