Make It Public! Border Pedagogy and the Transcultural Politics of Hope in Contemporary Cinematic Representations of Children

Geopolitical divisions within current manifestations of global capitalism make it difficult to imagine a view of citizenship that is not based on exclusion but on local-global connections; given that the vast majority of people most at risk in contemporary global contexts are children, it is important to distinguish between the plight of real children and how the figure of “the child” is evoked as a symbolic referent within popular imaginations. Noting the startling contradiction between the contemporary reality of the world’s youth and the often market-driven discursive realm of cultural representation, this article examines the representation of children in three 2006 films, Children of Men, Babel and Pan’s Labyrinth. Albeit in very different ways, each of these films utilizes the figure of the child to signal an intense preoccupation about the future of transnational democratic public life. Specifically, as forms of cultural “border” pedagogy, these films offer counter-hegemonic imaginings of new ways to narrate the future and represent the possibility of developing an alternative politics and ethics of hope.