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Compararemos conceptos y prácticas de participación infantil en contextos culturales diferentes. ¿El rol activo y las responsabilidades que se conceden a la niñez en culturas “no occidentales” pueden entenderse como modalidades de participación que posiblemente van más allá de los conceptos “occidentales” de la misma? Primero estudiaremos el concepto de participación de manera semántica y compararemos otros para problematizar ciertos aspectos del discurso “occidental”. Después hablaremos de la participación infantil y de la relación con jerarquías generacionales. Debatiremos las variantes de la práctica participativa con y de niños. Nos preguntamos si la Convención sobre los Derechos del Niño de Naciones Unidas abarca de manera adecuada las dimensiones de participación infantil en diferentes culturas. Finalmente nos abocaremos al tema de la participación política.

En la colonización del subcontinente que hoy llamamos América Latina, similar a la de otros continentes, los conquistadores europeos consideraban a los pueblos originarios como infantiles o aniñados. Las analogías infantilizadoras atribuían a los pueblos colonizados un intelecto limitado, lo cual permitía justificar la colonización como misión civilizadora y tratos discriminatorios y racistas hacia los niños y niñas de estos pueblos, y los que resultaron de relaciones sexuales entre conquistadores y mujeres indígenas y afrodecendientes. En este ensayo, el autor presenta prácticas diferentes pero cuyos orígenes son similares: pimero, la arbitrariedad racista que se daba a niños así llamados “ilegítimos” o “irregulares”, segundo, el trato que se brindaba a niñas y niños indígenas y afrodecendientes con el fin de “civilizarlos”, y tercero, la persecución y “limpieza social” en contra de los niños que no cumplen con las ideas pre-dominantes de una infancia socialmente aceptada. Estas prácticas se basan en los conceptos racistas de los gobernantes coloniales y repercuten en las sociedades latinoamericanas hasta el día de hoy.

This chapter follows some of the debates conducted in social childhood studies, such as the question of whether a ‘global childhood’ has developed during the processes of globalization and discusses the scope and limitations of Eurocentric childhood patterns. It explains what postcolonial constellations and postcolonial childhoods mean and illustrates these concepts with some empirical data. Finally, the chapter looks at the manifestations of children’s agency in the Global South and how agency can be conceptualized.

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In the debate on children’s rights, reference is often made to children’s interests but very little attention is paid to what the interests of children actually are, how they come about, and how they contribute to the foundation and understanding of children’s rights and to a practice oriented towards these rights. The author explains the complex relationship between children’s rights and interests, while illuminating some of its reasons and consequences. Since children’s rights are to be understood as human rights, the author takes a more general approach to the political and moral philosophical debate on human rights, in which reference to interests plays an important role. He relates the most important arguments in this debate specifically to children’s rights and offers an interest-based theoretical justification of children’s rights as agency rights.

Working children's social movements and organizations have emerged since the 1980s in many regions of the southern hemisphere. They have proved that working children can competently speak up for themselves. They have even convinced some self-assured adult 'child labour experts' that their voices can no longer be talked over or ignored. The Norwegian social scientist Per Miljesteig, for example, is trying to convince the World Bank that working children must be viewed as partners and must have the opportunity to participate in decisions made by the World Bank (Miljesteig, 2000). Another example is the French social scientist Michel Bonnet who-despite playing a decisive role between 1991 and 1996 in the International Programme for the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) on behalf of the International Labour Organization (ILO)-thoughtfully commented in 1999 that 'one shouldn't be hypnotised by the problem of child labour, but instead should open one's eyes and ears to working children and listen to what they have to say to us' (Bonnet, 1999: 11). But exactly what do working children have to say to us and what sphere of influence can they actually attain? Apart from large cultural and social differences, are there similarities in the way of thinking and acting among the working children of the South? In my analysis I refer to statements made at the regional and international meetings of delegates of children's organizations since 1994, 1 to 265