High-Risk Care: Motherhood, Intersecting Risks, and the Protection Paradox in Colombia

• In Event: 40820 - Section on Sociology of Sex and Gender Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 17: Gender and Violence

Abstract

This article examines how mothers navigate caregiving amid intersecting crises in Montes de María, a Colombian region affected by the legacies of armed conflict and the latency of environmental degradation. Drawing on eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork, over 60 interviews, and participatory visual methods, I conceptualize the “protection paradox”—a dynamic in which acts intended to shield family members from one danger often generate exposure to other forms of harm. This paradox reveals how care and risk function as co-constitutive processes rather than opposing forces. Existing theoretical approaches to care and risk fall short of capturing complex realities in environments with multiple, competing crises. On the one hand, structural-institutional perspectives emphasize how economic systems affect care provision but overlook conditions in the Global South. On the other hand, individualistic views examine personal caregiving strategies but neglect institutional contexts. I bridge these approaches by analyzing how mothers’ everyday decisions both respond to and challenge institutional frameworks in contexts where multiple risks converge.

The empirical analysis reveals two key findings. First, the protection paradox forces impossible choices as women must decide which threats take precedence—often sacrificing protection from one danger to mitigate another. These decisions demonstrate how care requires constant risk stratification when threats compete for attention. Second, mothers strategically use their status as “caregivers” to adapt their claim-making strategies and access state resources. This strategic framing represents sophisticated citizenship negotiations that blur boundaries between private care and public governance.

Ultimately, this article illuminates the domestic encroachments of war and environmental degradation—how these phenomena shape and transform domestic and family dynamics. As such, it contributes to feminist theories of care, welfare, and risk by revealing how high-risk settings reshape motherhood, with implications for understanding gendered survival practices, citizenship, and moral decision-making.

Author

• Maria Ximena Davila, University of Texas-Austin