Introduction: Lived Citizenship, Rights and Participation in Contemporary Europe

Abstract

The introduction highlights the most important results of the theoretical approaches to citizenship, rights and participation in childhood studies. Children’s citizenship is presented and recognition given to the fluidity of children’s citizenship identities and how this can be worked with conceptually. Our discussion of children’s rights moves away from simplistic notions of ‘rights and duties’ towards a critique of the normative frameworks of rights, and a more layered approach is examined. Children’s participation is considered particularly relevant in present societies, although critical voices have stressed the limits of political and societal efforts to enhance it. Agency is considered to be a way of observing children’s active participation in social relations and social change. Agency is the result of both relational constraints and interactions with adults. The last part of the introduction presents the chapters included in the collection.