“…For example, other pre-pandemic literature documented the active contributions of children in the spheres of family, community, the economy, and inter-generational relationships (Abebe, 2019, in African countries;Esser et al, 2017, in Germany;Spittler and Bourdillon, 2012, in African countries). This work argued that young people are not passive victims of circumstance; instead, they possess "agency" in contributing to their own well-being and to that of their families, even in adverse or disadvantaged situations (Sorbring and Kuczynski, 2018). Whilst academic debates, rehearsed elsewhere, concerning the concept of young people's agency (Esser et al, 2017;Spyrou, 2018;Abebe, 2019), seek to understand children's agency in terms of context, structure, relationships and interdependence, in this paper the term is used to refer simply to young people's own embodied sense of empowerment as social actors.…”