Displaced children: control of bodies and borders in the Lost Children Archive, by Varia Luiselli.

Abstract

The aim of this article is to analyze how the experience of refugee children, on the border between Mexico and the United States, is portrayed in the novel Lost children archive, by the Mexican author Valeria Luiselli. Every year, an estimated 100,000 children from Mexico and Central America face, often unaccompanied, a dangerous journey in search of safety and hope of survival in the United States. When refugees manage to reach the border, they still run the risk of being detained or deported back to their countries. Several children who travel under these circumstances to the United States – or from one country to another, anywhere in the world – are waiting a long time in detention centers or refugee camps, not knowing the fate that awaits them. It is from the stories of these children who flee, and sometimes get lost across borders, that Valeria Luiselli builds the novel Lost children archive, and places the reader in front of some aspects of the complex experience of refuge in the contemporary world. Therefore, the article presents data on refugee children, the author's relationship with the migration issue and how the polyphony of the work presents the characteristics of the control mechanisms of bodies at the border.