The Street, the Sponge, and the Ultra

This study maps changes in patterns of radical struggles between children-driven movements and child-targeting regimes. To better understand the global implications of these contests, this article argues that scholars need to challenge persistent forms of methodological and epistemological infantilization. Taking up the pivotal case of Egypt, this study traces how contemporary security regimes and populist modes of governance configure children as “the last savages” while collectives of children generate innovative forms of cultural, political, and economic resistance. This study deploys public ethnography, social history, and political-institutional discourse analysis. Providing avenues for thinking differently about both security politics and dissidence, this study offers three theory tools: emancipatory inhiraf and labor agency, child sovereignties and ‘Eid temporalities, and Ultra-generational tactics and wild disinfantilization—a mapping of the mass-mobilizing activities of very young workers, street denizens, and football/soccer fan collectives who are labeled “Ultras” in Egypt.