Children and youth under 18 have made significant strides in recent years toward fuller inclusion in democratic processes. These strides, however, rarely rise to the level of direct political representation, whether in changing policies, making laws, or voting. This article argues that democracies will be able to represent children only by transforming what is meant by democratic representation in the first place. It shows why democratic theory has traditionally excluded children, how representation is more than just participation or citizenship, and how current children's political movements provide lessons for a more expansive politics of direct representation regardless of age.
is essay argues that children's rights will adequately transform societies only when the very concept of "human rights" is reimagined in light of childhood. In this case, human rights would be understood as grounded, not in modernist ideas of autonomy, liberty, entitlement, or even agency, but in a postmodern circle of responsibility to one another. is "childist" interpretation of rights is constructed by examining various forms of child-centered ethical theory in Western history; their impacts on major human rights theories of the Enlightenment and today; alternative visions implied in twentieth century international children's rights agreements; new theoretical groundings arising out of postmodern ethics; and the possibility of human rights as truly including all humanity.
This paper argues that contemporary child and youth experiences of globalization call for retheorizing global justice around a new concept of empowered inclusion. The first part of the paper examines three case studies in globalizationchild labour movements, child and youth migration, and young people's organization around climate changeand shows how, in each case, young people, through their struggles against injustice, are simultaneously disempowered and empowered by their deep global interdependency. The second part proposes new theoretical advances in global justice that better respond to child and youth experiences through a childist concept of the empowered inclusion of both children and other marginalized groups. And the third part advances some preliminary suggestions about how a more child-responsive conception of global power and justice might be operationalized in practice across global policies, institutions, and culture.
Global citizenship is a much disputed term, involving a variety of competing neoliberal, cosmopolitan, and postcolonial framings. Much of this debate, however, assumes a hidden normative adulthood, just as did traditional understandings of citizenship in nation states. This article argues that attending to children’s experiences through a lens of childhood studies or childism opens up the possibility for more complex and profound theorizations of global participatory citizenship for all, both children and adults. In particular, the argument is advanced that global citizenship is better understood as a politics of reconstruction based on the aesthetic practice of interdependent political creativity. The key lies in understanding global political interdependence in a deep rather than superficial way as responding to children’s triple bind: their struggle all at once for self-empowerment, overcoming normative exclusions, and responsiveness from others.
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