‘Where are the adults?’: Troubling child-activism and children's political participation

Abstract

Children's political participation is a well-established theme in childhood studies. In this article we offer an original account of child activism that takes into account the entangled and emergent aspect of children as activists. We begin with a historical and a conceptual review, noting the importance of mid-20th century developments such as May 1968 but tracing their roots to the earlier community-derived activism of the US civil rights movement—a long episode of activism not normally included in accounts of children's political involvement. We consider the ways in which adults surround children, creating contexts and working for and through them with diverse political and social ends in mind. It has been a dominant focus of adult activity to facilitate children's participation rights. These rights are defined in international legislation as non-contingent, that is, explicitly predicated on an absence of responsibility. Regardless, the relational aspect of responsibility is present in children's lives in families, churches, schools and wherever adults interact with children, whether to protect, instruct, direct or guide them. We conclude by indicating how current historical and conceptual frames do not allow for the complex understanding required to account for children's agency understood as necessarily entangled with adults’ prior being in the world. We advocate a radical relational turn in childhood studies to leave behind the lacuna that arise from individualist accounts of child-activism.