Dziecięce obywatelstwo: kilka refleksji na marginesie idei dziecięcej partycypacji
CHILDREN’S CITIZENSHIP: A FEW REFLECTIONS ON THE MARGINS OF THE IDEA OF CHILDREN’S PARTICIPATION

Summary/Abstract: The idea of children’s participation gains currently ever more visibility within the body of childhood studies and analyses of children’s role in social networks, where it is conceived as a prerequisite for grounding the new sociology of childhood’s vision of a child as an active and competent social actor (see e.g. James, Prout 1997). The developing discourse of children’s agency is accompanied by a growing number of initiatives, projects, analyses and models of children’s participation, inspired at least partially by the “participatory climate” resulting from the formulation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Yet, the ongoing development of possible meanings of children’s participation reveals not only its potential but also its problematic nature. To further problematize participation is to look deeper into its purposes and rationales as well as to scrutinize the context of socio-cultural ideas about child-adult relations it is anchored in. By turning to the idea of children’s citizenship – as a right to respect, recognition and active participation – we can look at participation from the perspective of citizenship rights and move it from the field of childhood analyses to broader context of social relations. The article invites to explore these ideas further by presenting John Wall’s (2010, 2012) three meanings of children’s citizenship: as agency, as interdependence, and as difference.

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