Conclusion

This chapter reflects on the broad implications of an ethnography of young mothers who are placed by the state into a residence run by an international humanitarian organization. It concludes by discussing the lives of young women once they leave Palomitáy, and argues that attention to moral experience and intimate involvement enables a deeper understanding of the entanglement of affective relationships and social, political, and economic inequality in individual lives. The chapter suggests that attention to young mothers challenges anthropological research on relatedness in the Andes. Highlighting youth as social agents who do the labor of care, even as they are positioned as vulnerable and in need of care, extends understanding of intimate arenas and state power and the emergence of moral experience in ordinary interactions.