Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-10-31T23:35:11.789Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

five - Reconnecting and extending the research agenda on children’s participation: mutual incentives and the participation chain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2022

Get access

Summary

Introduction

During the past two decades, many societies have seen an accelerating movement towards the idea that children should participate in public affairs and have a voice in relation to decisions that affect them. Enshrined in Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), this notion has gathered both general support and efforts at practical implementation. Indeed, it has become part of the rhetorical orthodoxy, even among those such as the current English government, which has been a generally unenthusiastic proponent of children's rights. For example, five years ago the Children and Young People's Unit (CYPU) was established to develop a ‘joinedup policy’ in this area and stated that:

We want to hear the voices of young people, influencing and shaping local services; contributing to their local communities; feeling heard; feeling valued; being treated as responsible citizens. (CYPU, 2001, p 27)

The burden of our argument in this chapter is that research (and indeed wider discussions) of children's participation have, in the main, been too isolated from the debates about participation in general. That body of work, it is true, refers almost entirely to adult participation. Nevertheless, we believe there is much that those concerned with children's participation can learn from it.

An important prima facie case for linking the research literatures on adults’ and children's participation comes from considering how they both form part of a larger pattern of social change. The emergence of children's voice is, in part, the product of a more general shift in institutional practice that has affected children and adults alike. It is a sociological commonplace to remark that we live in a period of rapid social change. Theorists such as Beck (1992) and Giddens (1990, 1991) argue that this has eroded and fragmented once taken-for-granted institutions and has led to a new sense of uncertainty and risk. A widespread response to (and subsequent cause of) this destabilisation has been the installation of techniques of reflexivity into institutional practice. Reflexivity, it is argued, is needed in order to create the more responsive and flexible institutions demanded by the conditions of late modernity. The rise in calls for participation and the summoning up of the voice of a multitude of actors is the result. Political parties poll voters and conduct focus groups.

Type
Chapter
Information
Children, Young People and Social Inclusion
Participation for What?
, pp. 75 - 102
Publisher: Bristol University Press
Print publication year: 2006

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×