Childhoods

“A mainly Latin American perspective which seeks to demythologise Eurocentric structures of knowledge, being and power which have served the purpose of colonisation and domination” (de Castro, 2020, p 2489). This “calls into question the idea of modernity itself as a unique cultural and political event which put Europe in the centre of universal history and civilisation, past and future” (de Castro, 2020 p 2489). Quijano (2007) names this intimate connection between modernity/coloniality the cultural complex of coloniality, where European experience was centred as a universalist paradigm of knowledge. The notion of coloniality of power addresses the interlinkages between power, knowledge, racial hierarchy and capitalism, stressing how such connections reflect a continuation of Euro-centred colonialism, also after the end of ‘formal colonialism’ through its successor, Western imperialism (Quijano, 2000). The colonisation of the imagination of the dominated is part of a seductive power connected to the logic of development and modernity, which continues to have a dominant position (Quijano, 2007). From a feminist position, Lugones (2008) also analyzes the link between coloniality and gender.

The intersectional approach to children's rights examines how social class, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, disability, and age collectively influence the rights and duties of children. It highlights that children's rights are not uniform but vary significantly based on these intersecting factors. 

Decolonial theories emphasise the need to understand how colonial histories continue to shape contemporary understandings of children’s rights and childhood. This includes recognising that many current frameworks are rooted in Eurocentric ideas that may not be universally applicable or beneficial.

Decolonial scholars argue that the dominant human rights discourse is rooted in Eurocentric ideas that may not be applicable or beneficial to all cultures. They advocate for recognising and valuing non-Western contributions to developing children’s rights.

he dominant human rights discourse, including children’s rights, often presents itself as universal. Decolonial scholars argue that these frameworks are historically and culturally specific to Western contexts and may not adequately address the realities of children in non-Western societies.

Worlding is an active process of engaging with and shaping our environment and experiences. It involves consciously paying attention to and interacting with the material and contextual aspects of our surroundings. This process is embodied and enacted, meaning it is a way of being in the world that involves our whole self. Essentially, worlding is about how we actively create and interpret our world through our actions and perceptions.

Decolonial approaches encourage the incorporation of local knowledge and practices into the understanding and implementation of children’s rights. This involves valuing Indigenous and non-Western perspectives on childhood and rights, which can provide alternative ways of thinking about and addressing these issues.

Decolonial approaches encourage the development of alternative frameworks for children’s rights informed by local knowledge and practices. This involves moving beyond Western-centric models and incorporating diverse cultural perspectives, such as communitarian approaches to children's rights, children's collective rights as opposed to child rights; community rights; interdependence; and pluriversal existence that goes beyond human-nature dualism.

Dominant human rights principles often emphasize individuality, which can gloss collectivist cultures and communal practices and often fail to consider children’s own understandings and experiences of their rights. On the other hand, children’s rights are also framed in isolation from broader social and intergenerational contexts. A critical approach to children’s rights promotes an understanding of children’s rights that includes intergenerational contracts and responsibilities. CCRS also focuses on alternative interpretations of children’s rights that move away from legal understandings of rights towards how children make sense of rights as they navigate their existence and relationship with society. It also recognizes the interconnectedness of children’s rights with the rights and responsibilities of other community members.

Children's politics refers to the active involvement and engagement of children in political processes and decisions that affect their lives. It is not just about children being passive recipients of policies but about them actively participating and influencing these processes. This concept emphasizes the importance of recognizing children as subjects who can contribute to political discourse and decision-making. Children's politics involves creating spaces where children's voices are heard, and their perspectives are considered in shaping policies and practices that impact their lives.

Understanding children's political agencies and geographies is crucial for effectively implementing children's rights. To ensure children's right to participate in decisions affecting them, it is essential to recognize what issues children consider important and how they engage with these issues. This involves observing children's political actions not only in formal settings but also in everyday contexts. Relational agency: Moving beyond a binary thinking of either having or not having agency, we can rather see agency as distributed and relational drawing on a relational ontological approach requiring an open-ended exploitative approach (Abebe, 2019; Spyrou, 2018; Sørenssen et al., 2019).

Refer to “indigenous, decolonial and postcolonial perspectives on the study of childhood and children” that “push the boundaries for ways of knowing children and doing childhood studies through cross-disciplinary, generative south-north and south-south encounters.” These approaches engage with questions of “epistemic plurality and bottom-up theorization of research with globally southern children, to both rectify the onto-epistemological imbalance in childhood studies and reinscribe indigenous knowledge systems that have received limited attention” (Abebe Dar and Lysa 2022, 255).

This concept captures the complexities of children’s rights as an open-ended endeavour responsive to the world that the young construct as part of their everyday lives in the new world order (Hanson and Nieuwenhuys, 2013). The concept is tightly interwoven with social justice and translations. This kind of bottom-up approach embraces how children, families and other stakeholders engage with, interpret and give meaning to rights. As such, the concept 1) challenges the idea that children’s rights are exclusively defined by international institutions or states, 2) questions dominant views on the relation between the centre and the periphery of children’s rights, and 3) offers opportunities for empirical investigation of how co-existing, non-hierarchical forms of children’s rights.

A relational ontological approach emphasizes the interconnectedness of various social identities and structures, recognizing the multiplicity and diversity of childhood experiences. By engaging in a relational framework, we can avoid essentializing identities and open to the fluidity and context-dependence of these experiences. A relational perspective can also include materials and non-human actors ascribing to a socio-material approach. Through this we can explore children in relation to a more than human-world considering how children interact with their environments and the material aspects of their lives.

Crenshaw (1989) employed this concept to highlight the different ways in which race and gender interact, and how they generate multiple dimensions that shape the experiences of Black women in specific contexts (such as work), which allow us to interpret the lives of racialized and gendered childhoods. Moreover, Brah and Phoenix (2013) describe intersectionality as the complex, irreducible, diverse, and changing effects as assemblages that result when multiple inequalities intersect in specific contexts, revealing the functioning of oppressions.

When connecting intersectional theories and pedagogies: (a) students and educators are aware of the mechanisms of language and communication that have historically produced racism, classism, and sexism, among others; (b) by criticizing adultcentrism, control and subjugation, we concentrate on children's and youth agencies, on resignification, reappropriation and resistance; (c) we recognize how oppression and violence operate intersectionally, and how they go through institutions, everyday life, curricula, and bodies, defying dehumanization perpetrated by the gendered and racialized colonial gaze; (d) the critical analysis and research lay the groundwork for a collaborative decolonial process of thinking and experimenting for pedagogical purposes; (e) educational settings are seen as places of cultural privilege with asymmetries of power, which must be transformed to rebalance the presence of minoritized communities; (f) the awareness of the social, political, and cultural construction of values and norms push us far from the taken-for-granted dynamics; and (g) by making visible and learning through the diversity of children's cultures we create a more equitable, participatory and fair education (Rifà-Valls and López 2024).

An approach which acknowledges the necessity of taking a variety of contexts into account. Context-sensitivity also partially addresses the criticism that children's rights have been too Western or Eurocentric in their formulation and implementation (Reynaert et al., 2015).