“We came because we wanted to and not because we were pressured”: children and their rights to participation

Abstract

This article focuses on children's perceptions of participation, as their right to get involved and transform the socio-educational context, according to their wishes, intentions and productions. Having placed the discussion on children's participation as a right guaranteed by the Statute of Children and Adolescents (Estatuto da Criança e do Adolescente) and the Law of Early Childhood, we present how this investigative process emerged at Escola Viva Olho do Tempo, in the outskirts of the city of João Pessoa, state of Paraíba. From a methodological point of view, this is an ethnographic research, based on the participant's observation that emerged with the children as co-researchers, enabling the recognition of their emancipatory movements when seeking to guarantee and claim the right to participate, or not, in that context. We aim to reflect on how children learn about, recognize and build their participation by occupying /participating in the corners of the school, among agreements and conflicts, in their intra and intergenerational relationships. When considering their time-spaces of affection and learning, we reveal how children's rights are experienced, understood and (re) invented by them. We conclude that by feeling their practices and experiences, among forces and powers that surround their relationships, children learn how they can claim, conquer and (re)create, in their alterities, the right to participate or not in the practices in the educational context.