Children and Young People’s Political Participation: A Critical Analysis

Abstract

This chapter interrogates some of the debates within childhood research regarding the concept of children's participation. The chapter traces the prevalence of the concept through the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and academic discourse. Incorporating notions of participation in childhood research has encouraged researchers and development agents to include space for children's voices, involve children as research agents, and seek creative ways to incorporate methods that promote children's participation. However, there is often little discussion of the normative assumptions underlying participation projects and what this means for how and why we work with children in the ways that we do. Such normative assumptions implied and made visible through participatory discourses are that we need to listen to the voices of children, that they have individual human rights that must be upheld and honored, and that children, as beings, are important and need to be included in research. Each of these points has enabled children's participation in research to become normalized and legitimized. Likewise, children's researchers have made incredible strides in the international research community by promoting the value of children as political agents, publicizing the variety of ways children participate in P/politics, and demonstrating the ways they are indeed political. This chapter opens up the space needed to interrogate assumptions of children's participation in an effort to help us think more critically about our research programs so that we can challenge ourselves to entertain creative, ethical, diverse, and empowering research methods with the children and youth whose political agency we aim to better understand.