Vulnerability and rights enforceability: The perspective of children and adolescents

Abstract

A multiple-case study is presented, comprising typical cases of rights violations where each of the 16 child and adolescent participants constituted a case. Adopting a social community psychology approach, the authors analyzed the meanings that children and adolescents living in territories marked by psychosocial vulnerability construct with respect to their everyday life and their access to rights. A descriptive-exploratory study of a qualitative nature was conducted. Life stories, focus groups, and naturalistic observation were implemented. A biographical strategy was adopted to analyze the information collected. Results were organized according to three dimensions of biographical narratives: sociohistorical reality, linked to socioeconomic education; psychic reality, focused on the participants' being and doing dimensions; and discursive reality, as an instance of retrospective and prospective analysis of the connection with others. The cases presented called into question the effectiveness of social policies aimed at restoring people's rights. The participants' life trajectories revealed micro-and macro-political obstacles to accessing rights, a situation that supports the social reproduction of inequalities and has de-subjectivizing effects. Situations that guarantee identity grounding and rights enforceability promote individual and collective subjectivizing processes in the actors involved and pose new challenges in the construction of one's life project.