Childhood

This article investigates children’s participation and sense of belonging from the perspective of unaccompanied children, based on two qualitative research projects with unaccompanied children in Sweden and Finland. The results show that the unaccompanied children’s own understanding of their participation and belonging in different positions was fluid; for instance, the borders between childhood and adulthood, and striving for independence or wanting to be cared for by adults were flexible, allowing the children’s movement within and between the categories.

This article discusses the life projects of migrant children and young people in England and Spain and illustrates the importance of exploring family dynamics, contextual legal constraints, and ‘transnational uncertainties’ as part of young migrants’ ideas about the future. It reflects on the dilemma posed by acknowledging the agency of migrant children in relation to their future while at the same time considering the constraints they meet as minors and migrants within a broader family and societal context.

Minimum wages legislation in the United Kingdom applies to those aged 16 years or older. Evidence is presented that children believe that their wage levels should be ‘fair’. On one hand, such views have emerged from focus groups of working children. On the other, various pressure groups representing young people are seeking to establish fair payment to child workers. It is argued that the government, trade unions and other bodies have failed to adequately address the protection of young workers.

Drawing on the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the article highlights various conceptions of violence at a Swedish boarding school and is based on a critical discourse analysis of different educational and media documents. The investigation indicates that ambitions to protect children from violence need to overcome the dichotomy of private and public in order to protect children affected by violence in the borderland between the private and public spheres.

This self-reflective article explores the possibilities of producing children’s ‘voice’ in the domestic research context. We look at producing voices as the process of giving an account of children’s meaning making and life. We examine the methodological challenges of producing voices in the home environment from three perspectives: power, trust and ethics. The findings presented in the article are based on an ongoing longitudinal study of Finnish children’s media environments, which began in 2007 and will continue through 2016.

Ambiguities and tensions can arise when children are facilitated to act as ‘primary researchers’ concerning whether this is primarily to support their ‘participation’ in knowledge production and, with the knowledge produced, in relevant decision-making processes or whether it is mainly for any educational benefits. This article considers these ambiguities and tensions theoretically and by using evidence from a study where English primary school children were supported to conduct their own research projects. It concludes that, while the boundaries between children’s research as participation and pedagogy can be ambiguous, it should not be promoted for its potential educational benefits alone.

This article draws on a memory-work project on the childhood experiences and memories of pornography in Finland to argue that the autobiographical younger self used in these reminiscences is a creature distinct from the cultural figure of a child at risk, and that the forms of learning connected to pornography are more diverse and complex than those limited to sexual acts alone. The notion of an asexual child susceptible to media effects remains detached from people’s accounts of their childhood activities, experiences and competences. By analyzing these, it is possible to critically reexamine the hyperbolic concerns over the pornification and sexualization of culture.

This article interrogates what are frequently taken to be central commitments of Childhood Studies: the idea that children are worthy of study ‘in their own right’, that childhood is a ‘social construction’, that children are and must be treated as active agents, and that participatory methods are the gold standard. It is argued that while these ideas have been fruitful in some respects, they involve fundamental problems.

This article explores how children make, manage, or avoid friendships in super-diverse primary school settings. We draw on interviews and pictorial data from 78 children, aged 8–9 years across three local London primary schools to identify particular friendship groupings and the extent to which they followed existing patterns of social division. Children in the study did recognise social and cultural differences, but their friendship perceptions, affections, conflicts and practices meant that the way in which difference impacted relationships was partial and unstable. Friendship practices in the routine settings of school involved interactions across difference, but also entrenchments around similarity.

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Thomas N, Graham A, Powell MA, et al. (2016) Conceptualisations of children’s wellbeing at school: The contribution of recognition theory. Childhood 23(4): 506–520. DOI: 10.1177/0907568215622802.