Children's Involvement in Personal and Collective Decision-Making: Orientations for Research in South America

In a perspective that seeks to contribute to the articulation of Childhood studies and Children's rights studies, this article conceives children's civil and political rights as forms of legitimising their involvement in personal and collective decision-making. Within this framework, it analyses some of the controversies that have arisen in South America about children's powers in this subject and the relationship to be established with parents and the State, as well as the scenarios in which these controversies are situated. At the same time, it proposes preliminary theoretical and methodological orientations for research in this subject, which: facilitate the understanding of complex regional situations involving both forms of historical sedimentation and emerging processes; allow us to explore the socially 'living' and not merely juridical-formal character of rights; and are oriented towards both the understanding of current forms of interpretation and action and the intentional production of forms of social imagination of new social practices.