Epistemic Injustice and Children’s Well-Being

Abstract

Children have a fine sense of injustice. But can they report their experiences? Are their voices heard? This essay criticizes conceptions of justice that focus merely on the offender, and, thus, dismiss the experiences of the affected. In order to discuss children’s life, it is necessary to include their experiences and perspectives, and to give them their own voice. By addressing ethical and epistemic injustice, this approach enfolds the sense of injustice itself, it poses the question of how to describe injustice as a phenomenon on its own, and depicts prejudices caused by ageism, racism, or sexism that may exclude the testimony of particular persons, for instance children. Children belong to the group that is particularly vulnerable to being affected by ethical and epistemic injustice because their testimony is dismissed quite easily. They are born into and live in relations, they did not choose. Based on these relations children experience the surrounding world, they feel trust or mistrust, and they face injustice or justice towards themselves or others. Ethical and epistemic injustices violate the children’s well-being.