Childcare commons: Of feminist subversions of community and commune in Barcelona.

This paper explores childcare as a matter of social reproduction and the commons, in tension with some ethical and political questions regarding the status of children as political actors. How can we think through the political practice and significance of childcare commoning? What might a radical politics of childcare look like? Looking at three modalities of childcare commoning in the neighbourhood of Poble Sec in Barcelona - mothers' networks, self-organized childcare groups, and municipal policies of childhood - this text emphasizes the role of neighbourhood networks and municipal institutions in childcare commoning. Narrating examples of transversal and sympoietic organizing across the private, public and commons spheres, the paper situates the organizing of childcare in the contemporary feminist and municipalist context of Barcelona, in which I myself partake. It points to agents and dynamics that are under-explored in extant organizational and commons studies: mothers, midwives, post-partum classes, creches, playgrounds, municipal offices, neighbourhood chat groups, and not least children. This raises the question: Who is the subject of childcare, and how might we envisage subjectivity and political agency differently, learning from social ecosystems of care? This paper offers a novel look at how emergent feminist politics articulate autonomy and interdependence, as well as the commons and public systems in alternate ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]