Critical Perspectives on Children’s Rights

Children’s rights made a fruitful field to analyze some contemporary sociohistorical processes related to the inequalities and hierarchies among countries and in local societies. The exploration of egality, inequality and difference as paradoxes help to illuminate the modes in which race, class, colonialism and patriarchy articulate the humanitarian strategies and the development policies in Global South or “underdeveloped” countries and around the North/South and West/Orient divides. At the same time, perspectives on lived rights and “from below” helps us to understand how, in which circumstances, subordinate subjects can mobilize and legitimize their demands, and articulate resistance through the strategic use of the rights’ language.

The objective of this session will be to explore tensions and new conceptual perspectives in empirical research from different case studies, either countries vernacularization processes or specific rights violations or problems, as forced migration, juvenile justice, political participation, womens-and-children’s rights conflicts, etc.