Research
You will find a complete range of our monographs, muti-authored and edited works including peer-reviewed, original scholarly research across the social sciences and aligned disciplines. We publish long and short form research and you can browse the complete Bristol University Press and Policy Press archive.
Policy Press also publishes policy reviews and polemic work which aim to challenge policy and practice in certain fields. These books have a practitioner in mind and are practical, accessible in style, as well as being academically sound and referenced.
Books: Research
At the latest since the adoption of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989, children worldwide have been regarded as persons with their own special rights. These include rights that are intended to protect them and influence decisions that affect them. But how far these so-called participation rights go and whether they also include political rights is disputed. They oppose social structures that nail children down to a subordinate position, which today is subsumed under the term adultism, the meaning of which is explained at the beginning of the chapter. In this chapter it is discussed, especially with regard to children of the Global South, how far political rights, especially the right of children to vote, can contribute to counteracting adultism as a form of the colonization of children. This question is discussed not only in relation to children living today, but also in relation to future generations and intergenerational justice.
Children in the Global South continue to be affected by social disadvantage in our unequal post-colonial world order. With a focus on working-class children in Latin America, this book explores the challenges of promoting children’s rights in a decolonizing context.
Liebel and colleagues give insights into the political lives of children and demonstrate ways in which the concept of children’s rights can be made meaningful at the grassroots level. Looking to the future, they consider how collaborative research with children can counteract their marginalization and oppression in society.
Children in the Global South continue to be affected by social disadvantage in our unequal postcolonial world order. With a special focus on working-class children in Latin America, this book explores the challenges of promoting children’s rights in a decolonizing context. It gives insights into the political lives of children and demonstrate ways in which the concept of children’s rights can be made meaningful at the grassroots level. The overall perspective of the book is emancipatory for children of the Global South, providing a much-needed refocus for children’s rights through the lens of the decolonization of childhoods. The book recognizes children as actors for a free and just society without violence and discrimination. It informs and interprets the history and present of children’s rights as a medium of resistance, emancipation and liberation. Looking to the future, the book considers how collaborative and participatory research with children, guided by ethical principles, can counteract their marginalization and oppression in society. The book continues and concretizes reflections outlined by the author in his book Decolonizing Childhoods (Policy Press, 2020).
The basic idea of children’s protagonism (protagonismo infantil), which emerged in Latin America in the 1970s, is that children are social subjects. They claim to play an active role in society and to be able to meaningfully influence the decisions that affect their lives. This is understood both as a right and an opportunity that children should have, and as a practice they already live. The emphasis is not on individual action, but on collective and organized action of the children themselves. After introducing the basic ideas of the concept, the chapter reviews its history and reflects on the risks, misunderstandings and reinterpretations associated with protagonism. Finally, the main challenges for its reconceptualization are presented. Also, the question is raised to what extent the concept of protagonism can serve as an orientation in education and social work.
This chapter discusses the different meanings and ambivalences of subjectivity and subjective rights. In order not to let children fall into the trap of the ‘entrepreneurial self’ and the permanent need for self-optimization, an understanding of subjectivity is explored that gives children confidence and enables them to defend themselves against their degradation and the instrumentalization of their own initiatives and agency. The chapter concludes how, in contrast to an economic subjectivation that is based on permanent self-optimization, perspectives of political subjectivity can be developed that enable more or less subjugated subjects to object to their orientation towards ‘human capital’. The chapter explains that an important element here is the fact that the desired liberation from constraints is linked to the struggle for dignity, equality and social justice. Such aspirations can be seen wherever children from popular and indigenous sectors gather to resist both their relegation to silence and their stigmatization and social contempt as ‘poor’, ‘Indian’, ‘babe’ or ‘minor’. In this way, children reaffirm themselves as collective subjects of rights against every form of social injustice, racism, sexism and adultism at once.
Children in the Global South continue to be affected by social disadvantage in our unequal postcolonial world order. With a special focus on working-class children in Latin America, this book explores the challenges of promoting children’s rights in a decolonizing context. It gives insights into the political lives of children and demonstrate ways in which the concept of children’s rights can be made meaningful at the grassroots level. The overall perspective of the book is emancipatory for children of the Global South, providing a much-needed refocus for children’s rights through the lens of the decolonization of childhoods. The book recognizes children as actors for a free and just society without violence and discrimination. It informs and interprets the history and present of children’s rights as a medium of resistance, emancipation and liberation. Looking to the future, the book considers how collaborative and participatory research with children, guided by ethical principles, can counteract their marginalization and oppression in society. The book continues and concretizes reflections outlined by the author in his book Decolonizing Childhoods (Policy Press, 2020).
This chapter gives an insight into the hidden history of children’s rights and their origins. Its focus is on the historical emergence of rights that can contribute to the emancipation and liberation of children and to strengthen their social position. It shows how the emergence of these rights was and still is linked to social struggles and social movements in which children were and are actively involved. With regard to the present and here particularly with attention to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the most important and most momentous document on children’s rights to date, the chapter explains why children’s rights must not be understood as an abstract construct, but must be related to the concrete life contexts of children, here explained with regard to children of the Global South. Also, they need to be developed further with the relevant participation of children. This also amounts to combining the practice of children’s rights not only with pedagogical but also with political action with a decolonial perspective.
For about two decades, studies on children’s rights have been developed as a particular branch of research. Like social childhood studies and human rights studies, which have a longer history, it is considered a scientific field with specific interests and cognitive issues. Some similarities can be identified in the discussion, but the question also arises how the profile of these studies can be refined, expanded and, in some points, reconceptualized. This chapter raises some of these questions and offers considerations about future prospects for children’s rights studies. After summarizing the previous discussion regarding the aims of these studies, their legal understanding and policy implications are analysed and the question is raised to what extent the concept of ‘living rights’ can serve as a guideline for research. The chapter then turns to the question of the Eurocentric bias of children’s rights discourse and practice, and the need for its decolonization. The tense relationship between universalism and cultural relativism in the understanding and treatment of these rights is then looked into. Finally, the question whether children’s rights studies should be seen more as a form of ‘enlightenment’ or as a contribution to ‘political intervention’ is addressed.
Based on the arguments of the previous chapters, it is argued why and in which way children’s rights should be understood and practised as counter-rights.
This chapter addresses selected problems and dilemmas that arise in research with children from the Global South, insofar as it is conducted by adults residing in countries of the Global North. The chapter identifies some reasons for these problems and asks to what extent and in which way ethical principles can be of help in dealing with and overcoming these problems. After presenting the inequalities in the globalized postcolonial world as a political and ethical problem, it discusses the possibilities of adopting ethical symmetry in contemporary childhood studies. Selected dilemmas are discussed that arise from the epistemological environment of the researchers. The chapter questions some of the attempts to give a voice to the children of the Global South, and finally shows why childhood studies needs to free itself from Eurocentric premises and decolonize itself, as well as how this can be achieved.
