Childhood and Environmental Challenges: An Exploration of Children’s Experiences of Everyday Life in Kashmir, India

There is growing sociological literature on the intersections of childhood experiences and environmental issues. Yet, we lack an understanding of how children negotiate environmental challenges in their everyday lives in conflict zones around the world. By drawing upon a qualitative empirical study which focused on children’s subjectivities in Kashmir, we explore Kashmiri (Muslim, Sikh, and Hindu) children’s perspectives on how they navigate space and place in a context of conflict and quotidian violence. This paper offers an original analysis of children’s understanding of their environmental context, and their engagement with spatial localities within a framework of child well-being. The study includes narratives of 52 children, aged 14-16 in two locations in Kashmir. A thematic analysis of interview narratives, in combination with children’s mapping of their journey from home to school, illustrates the challenging environmental context and how spatiality intersects with structural violence and environmental justice.

Findings document the direct and sustained everyday impact of living in a conflict zone and how this governs children’s lives. Children’s accounts demonstrate the constraints on their own agency as a result of macro and micro level power structures. The impact of increased Indian tourism to ‘safe spots’, and the environmental harms emanating from this are also included from children’s perspectives, including concerns about their ecology. Implications for policy and practice are sketched out within a framework of Indian army’s ongoing presence in Kashmir. The paper should be of interest to educationalists, health policy makers, and scholars of environmental harm and social justice.