What Counts As Turbulence? Different Childhoods, Different Perspectives

Turbulent times are not experienced the same way by everyone, everywhere, at all times. How children themselves perceive turbulence may differ greatly. A child living and growing up amid war, displacement, or climate instability and/or threats might not perceive such conditions as exceptionally turbulent – they may be part of everyday life, requiring constant management of precarious conditions. What counts as turbulent can vary by geographic region and by children's broader social contexts. This session takes up this question – what counts as “turbulent,” for whom, and under which conditions – as an empirical matter. It centers children as social actors who perceive and interpret their social worlds and who relate to them in distinct ways – whether through action, adaptation, or the navigation of structural limits. This focus is particularly urgent given children's structural marginalization, their limited political representation, the climate finance gap, and overlapping disadvantages.

We invite contributions exploring how children experience, interpret, and evaluate societal developments. We are interested in what counts as "turbulent" from children's own perspectives and in how this varies across social, political, local, or national contexts. Contributions might address how such conditions are embedded in children's everyday lives – from their immediate surroundings to the global scale – or what images, narratives, and sources of knowledge shape their experiences. We also welcome papers examining how children imagine their own futures in turbulent conditions: what they expect, hope for, or fear, which strategies they develop, and through which arenas or platforms this unfolds.