Notes on The Politics of Children’s Rights and Representation

Studies in Childhood and Youth Series

  • Series Editors:
    • Afua Twum-Danso Imoh (University of Bristol, UK)
    • Nigel Patrick Thomas (University of Central Lancashire, UK)
    • Spyros Spyrou (European University Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus)
    • Anandini Dar (School of Education Studies, Ambedkar University Delhi, New Delhi, India)
  • Focuses on global and multi-disciplinary scholarship on childhood and youth.
  • Explores childhood and youth as social, historical, cultural, and material phenomena.
  • Encourages diverse theoretical and methodological approaches.
  • Welcomes proposals exploring diversities and complexities of children's and young people's lives.
  • Addresses gaps in literature related to childhoods and youth in space, place, and time.
  • Encourages writing that advances theory or engages with contemporary global challenges.
  • Relevant to students and scholars in Childhood Studies, Youth Studies, Sociology, Anthropology, Geography, Politics, Psychology, Education, Health, Social Work, and Social Policy.

The Politics of Children’s Rights and Representation

  • Edited by Bengt Sandin, Jonathan Josefsson, Karl Hanson, and Sarada Balagopalan.

Editors

  • Bengt Sandin:
    • Department of Thematic Studies—Child Studies, Linköping University, Sweden
  • Jonathan Josefsson:
    • Department of Thematic Studies—Child Studies, Linköping University, Sweden
  • Karl Hanson:
    • Centre for Children’s Rights Studies, University of Geneva, Switzerland
  • Sarada Balagopalan:
    • Department of Childhood Studies, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Camden, NJ, USA
  • ISSN: 2731-6467 (print) and e-ISSN: 2731-6475 (electronic)
  • ISBN: 978-3-031-04479-3 (hardcover) and e-ISBN: 978-3-031-04480-9 (electronic)
  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04480-9
  • Open Access publication licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
    • Permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution, and reproduction in any medium or format with appropriate credit.

Usage of Names, Trademarks, and Service Marks

  • The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks does not imply they are exempt from relevant protective laws and regulations.
  • Publisher, authors, and editors believe the information in the book is accurate at the time of publication but do not provide a warranty for errors or omissions.
  • Publisher remains neutral regarding jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
  • Published by Springer Nature Switzerland AG, Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland.

Acknowledgements

  • The book originates from the research project "Children’s Rights and Perceptions of Justice, Rights and Equality: The Challenge of Children’s Representation."
  • Funded by the British Academy as part of the program Tackling the UK’s International Challenges.
  • Afua Twum-Danso Imoh played a critical role in gathering research scholars.
  • Scholars involved: Sarada Balagopalan, Karl Hanson, Jonathan Josefsson, Yaw Ofosu-Kusi, Didier Reynaert, Bengt Sandin, and Christopher Willman.
  • Initial versions of chapters were shared at a conference in Accra, Ghana.
  • Expanded volume to include other scholars whose research aligned with emerging themes.
  • Gratitude to Afua for hosting and to the University of Ghana.
  • Christopher Willman and Edward van Daalen assisted with conference coordination and policy seminars.
  • Thanks to contributors for their work and feedback.
  • The book is published Open Access with support from the Swiss National Science Foundation.

Contents

  • Part I: Childhood Politics: From Rights and Participation to Representation
    • Chapter 2: Recognizing Children’s Rights: From Child Protection to Children’s Human Rights—The 1979 Swedish Ban on Corporal Punishment in Perspective by Bengt Sandin
    • Chapter 3: Adults in Charge: The Limits of Formal Child Participatory Processes for Societal Transformation by Afua Twum-Danso Imoh
    • Chapter 4: Children’s Participation in Their Right to Education: Learning from the Delhi High Court Cases, 1998–2001 by Sarada Balagopalan
    • Chapter 5: Representing the Child Before the Court by Nataliya Tchermalykh
  • Part II: Children’s Representation and the International Politics of Children’s Rights
    • Chapter 6: ‘Could It Be That They Do Not Want to Hear What We Have to Say?’ Organised Working Children and the International Politics and Representations of Child Labour by Edward van Daalen
    • Chapter 7: “Children Without Childhood”: Representations of the Child-Soldier as an International Emergency by Jana Tabak
    • Chapter 8: Children’s Representation in the Transnational Mirror Maze by Karl Hanson
  • Part III: Children’s Representation in Times of Inequalities and Injustices
    • Chapter 9: Deliberative Disobedience as a Strategy for Claiming Rights and Representation in the Family: The Case of Accra’s Street Children by Yaw Ofosu-Kusi
    • Chapter 10: Combatting Child Poverty in the Childhood Moratorium: A Representational Lens on Children’s Rights by Didier Reynaert, Nicole Formesyn, Griet Roets and Rudi Roose
    • Chapter 11: Child Figurations in Youth Climate Justice Activism: The Visual Rhetoric of the Fridays for Future on Instagram by Frida Buhre
    • Chapter 12: Political Strategies of Self-representation: The Case of Young Afghan Migrants in Sweden by Jonathan Josefsson
    • Chapter 13: Political Representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Youth in Australia by Sana Nakata and Daniel Bray

Notes on Contributors

Sarada Balagopalan

  • Associate Professor of Childhood Studies at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Camden, USA.
  • Interdisciplinary research focuses on marginal children’s experiences: compulsory schooling, labour, gendered school spaces, children’s rights discourses, and pedagogies of “citizenship”.
  • Focuses on postcolonial childhoods.
  • Aims to challenge exclusionary logics around marginal children and decentre hegemonic assumptions around childhood.
  • Authored Inhabiting Childhood: Children, Work and Schooling in Postcolonial India (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).
  • Associate editor of the SAGE Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood Studies (2020).
  • Co-editor of the journal Childhood.

Daniel Bray

  • Senior Lecturer of International Relations at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia.
  • Research focuses on pragmatist approaches to cosmopolitan politics, global governance, and representative democracy.
  • Current research examines the representation of children and childhood in democratic politics.
  • Author of Pragmatic Cosmopolitanism: Representation and Leadership in Transnational Democracy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) and Global Democratic Theory (with Steven Slaughter, 2015).

Frida Buhre

  • Researcher in rhetoric at Uppsala University, Sweden.
  • Studies the political aesthetics of the youth climate justice movement.
  • Focuses on the mobilization of Fridays for Future and youth/children as agents of change in UN Climate Change Conferences.
  • Background in rhetoric and political philosophy.
  • Published on political agency, power, temporality, pedagogy, knowledge regimes, and Sami political mobilization.

Nicole Formesyn

  • Policy officer at the Organisation for Community Development (SAAMO) East-Flanders.
  • Worked with vulnerable people on their social rights for over 20 years.
  • Involved in projects on the right to housing, education, and child poverty.

Karl Hanson

  • Professor of Public Law and Director of the Centre for Children’s Rights Studies at the University of Geneva, Switzerland.
  • Doctorate in law from Ghent University, Belgium.
  • Research interests: children’s rights studies, child labour, juvenile justice, and national children’s rights institutions.
  • Teaches at the University of Geneva in the Master interdisciplinaire en droits de l’enfant (MIDE).
  • Programme Director of the Master of Advanced Studies in Children’s Rights (MCR).
  • Chair of the Steering Committee of the Children’s Rights European Academic Network (CREAN).
  • Co-editor of the journal Childhood.

Jonathan Josefsson

  • Associate Professor in the Department of Thematic Studies—Child Studies at Linköping University, Sweden.
  • Research focuses on young migrants’ political activism, voting rights, age and democratization, and political representation of children/youth in global politics.
  • Principal investigator for "Youth Representation in Global Politics: Climate, Migration and Health Governance Compared" (2020–2023).
  • Visiting fellow at Harvard University and Rutgers University.
  • Publications include "Empowered Inclusion: Theorizing Global Justice for Children and Youth" (2020), "Non-citizen Children and the Right to Stay: A Discourse Ethical Approach" (2019), and "Age as a Yardstick for Political Citizenship" (2022).

Sana Nakata

  • Associate Professor of Political Science at The University of Melbourne, Australia.
  • Co-director of the Indigenous-Settler Relations Collaboration.
  • Associate Dean Indigenous in the Faculty of Arts.
  • Torres Strait Islander woman, trained in law and political theory.
  • Research interests: politics of childhood, Indigenous childhood, and implications for democracy in contexts of ongoing colonization.
  • Author of Childhood Citizenship, Governance and Policy: The Politics of Becoming Adult (2015).
  • Co-editor of the book series Indigenous Settler Relations in Australia and the World.

Yaw Ofosu-Kusi

  • Professor of Social Studies, Dean of the School of Arts and Social Studies at the University of Energy and Natural Resources, Sunyani, Ghana.
  • Research focuses on the informal economy, children’s mobility, and street life as labour.
  • Recent works include: The Challenge of African Potentials (2020), Children, Childhood and the Future: Cross-Cultural Perspectives (2020), and edited volume Children’s Agency and Development in African Societies (2017).

Didier Reynaert

  • Lecturer of Social Work and senior researcher at the EQUALITY//Research Collective of HOGENT University of Applied Sciences and Arts.
  • Expertise: social work theory, social justice, human rights, and children’s rights.
  • Guest Lecturer at HAN University of Applied Sciences (Netherlands), Ghent University, and Odisee University of Applied Sciences.

Griet Roets

  • Associate Professor of Social Work at Ghent University (Belgium).
  • Research interests: social work in relation to social inequalities (poverty, disability, gender, age, place/space), citizenship, social rights, socio-spatial perspectives, and qualitative research methodologies.

Rudi Roose

  • Associate Professor of Social Work at Ghent University (Belgium).
  • Research interest: development of socially just practices in the context of managerialism and the recognition of ambiguity on social work.

Bengt Sandin

  • Professor Emeritus in the Department of Thematic Studies—Child Studies at Linköping University, Sweden.
  • Research focuses on children and childhood in a historical perspective (early modern period to the late Swedish welfare state).
  • Studies cover early modern education, state-building, child labour, nineteenth-century childhood, street children, educational media politics, welfare politics, and welfare regimes.
  • Current research deals with children’s rights regimes in Sweden, voting restrictions, political representation of children/youth (1900–2000), and the limit of state responsibility in redressing child abuse in out-of-home care.
  • Recent publications include: Schooling and State Formation in Early Modern Sweden (2020), "Child Rights Governance: An Introduction" (2019), "Historical Justice through Redress Schemes?" (2018), and "Age as a Yardstick for Political Citizenship" (2022).

Jana Tabak

  • Assistant Professor in the Department of International Relations at the State University of Rio de Janeiro.
  • Author of The Child and the World: Child-Soldiers and the Claim for Progress (2020).
  • Publications include: co-edited special issue of Childhood: A Journal of Global Child Research, Organizações Internacionais: História e Práticas (2015), and Modernity at Risk: Complex Emergencies, Humanitarianism, Sovereignty (2012).
  • Taught in areas of international organizations, peace and conflict studies, and children and war.

Nataliya Tchermalykh

  • Postdoctoral teaching and research fellow in the Centre for Children’s Rights Studies at the University of Geneva (Switzerland).
  • Social anthropologist with a doctoral degree in sociology and anthropology.
  • Research interests: socio-legal studies, legal anthropology, visual anthropology, and art.
  • Research project: Can a Child Sue a State? A socio-anthropological inquiry into prerequisites of children’s access to international justice.

Afua Twum-Danso Imoh

  • Senior Lecturer of Global Childhoods and Welfare at the University of Bristol.
  • Research focuses on children’s rights and social/cultural norms, parent-child relations, the impact of historical developments and social changes on constructions of childhood, and children’s participatory rights.
  • Research concentrated on Ghana and Nigeria.
  • Managed ten research and networking projects as principal investigator.
  • Lead co-editor of Childhoods at the Intersection of the Global and the Local (2012), Children’s Lives in an Era of Children’s Rights: The Progress of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in Africa (2013), and Global Childhoods Beyond the North-South Divide (2018).
  • Editor for the Palgrave Macmillan Study of Childhood and Youth Series and editorial board member for Third World Thematics and the Rutgers Series in Childhood Studies.

Edward van Daalen

  • Postdoctoral fellow in the Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism (CHRLP) of the McGill University in Montreal, Canada.
  • Works on the intersections of international law and policy making, children’s rights, and social movements.
  • PhD in international public law from the University of Geneva, Switzerland, studying the role of organized working children in the development of international child labour law.
  • Published chapters and articles in human rights journals, including the International Journal of Human Rights and the International Journal of Children’s Rights.
  • Organizing member of the Children and Work Network and founder of the Law and Cinema Club at the Sciences Po Law School in Paris.