Recognising Children’s Citizenship in the Social Care System

Abstract

Social work understanding of children’s citizenship has received little analysis and traditional models tend to view children as passive recipients of care or welfare, rather than as active meaning makers. This is particularly so for looked after children. In contrast, we draw upon the work of Pierre Bourdieu to develop a model of understanding children’s citizenship that on the one hand accounts for the structural flow of governance from modern welfare states that shape children’s lives, while recognising the agency and capacity for action among children. This article applies the model to those in the care system. To capture the everyday agency of children, we build upon Bourdieu’s notion of habitus with ideas of lived citizenship, as defined by Delanty and Lister, and recognition theory classically outlined by Honneth. Furthermore, we contribute to the existing work on habitus to develop a model adapted from the pragmatism associated with the work of Boltanski. In so doing, analysing the critical and justificatory account making of children themselves, social workers are able to engage positively with all children by drawing on a variety of their social worlds.

Being, Becoming and Belonging in Constructing Children’s Lived Citizenship with Contact Persons and Contact Families

“…However, claims about children's citizenship have long featured in social science discussions (e.g., Invernizzi & Williams, 2008;Lister, 2007aLister, , 2007bMoosa-Mitha, 2005;Roche, 1999), and children's citizenship has been described as a "slowly filling theoretical lacuna" (Lister, 2007a). Despite this, Cockburn and Devine (2020) point out that, in social work, understanding of children's citizenship has received little analytical attention. Cockburn andDevine (2020, p. 2136) place children's citizenship in "generational and lived contexts, shaped by governmental structures and narratives of (mis)recognition. "…”

“…Children saying "yes" or "no" could be considered to constitute sufficient participation. In intergenerational relations, expectations and understandings of the role and status of children are usually dominated by adults (Cockburn & Devine, 2020;Thomas, 2021). The inherent power imbalance between adult and child indicates that this must be acknowledged.…”

Discourses of children's citizenship in early childhood settings: A cross-national perspective in the global context

“…These discourses contribute to a re-interpretation of citizenship which is not solely a Western construct built on "a notion of a system for affairs in the public sphere, [with] the legacy of women and children being relegated to the private domain" (Phillips, Ritchie, & Dynevor, et al, 2020, p. 22). For young children, their status and practice of citizenship have been increasingly emphasised and recognised as being crucial for the well-being of both themselves and society (Cockburn & Devine, 2020;Larkins, 2014;Phillips, Ritchie, & Dynevor, et al, 2020). The attention to children's citizenship is further explained in the following section.…”

“…Devine have proposed a structure of children's citizenship whereby children's embodied dispositions are centrally positioned as influencing how young children think and enact their citizenship (Cockburn & Devine, 2020;Devine & Cockburn, 2018). Based on the theories of Foucault and Bourdieu, this model recognises that power circulates in various types of institutions and that the subject of children's citizenship is "fluid and evolving" (Devine & Cockburn, 2018, p. 153).…”

“…She discussed the five presociological theoretical models 7 of children and pointed out that these models construct children as "citizens of the future" (p. 17). The main reasons for the exclusion of children from being classed as full citizens include social dimensions such as age, class, and ethnicity, as well as the perception of young children's inferior capacity and competence compared with adults' (Cockburn & Devine, 2020;Larkins, 2014;Lister, 2007c;Phillips, 2010).…”