Childhood

Like childhood, thinking critically about militarism can entail a great deal of unlearning before coming to a more nuanced understanding of what lies beyond the signifier. Just as childhoods are multiple, overlapping, contingent, and bound up in many more aspects of our social worlds than is apparent if we look only for the child, so too militarism. The ways in which militarisms intersect childhoods and vice versa, therefore, call us to reflect not only on the conspicuous presence of militaries as institutions or on life in zones of conflict, but on the everyday lives of children everywhere in all their complexity and diversity.

The debate over the scope of the Canadian military’s contribution to the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali evolved from the ambitious promise of ground troops to the deployment of narrow support to the mission. This article examines how the strategic use of childhood in political persuasion shaped security discourse and the nature of the Canadian contribution to United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali. This article analyzes political and media genres of discourse to examine mechanisms which (re)constructed, legitimized, and constituted childhoods during the debate on the Canadian peacekeeping deployment to Mali. Looking through the lens of critical discursive analysis, the article demonstrates the policy implications of rendering children as, what Marshall Beier defined, “security anxieties.” Representing children as potential security threats to the Canadian Armed Forces reveals their agency; it also, however, ignores the multiple, fluid roles of children in areas of conflict. This reductionist type of agency calls for correction on behalf of policy actors, furthering the objectification of children as a political problem. Examining how childhood is employed in influencing the debate about the use of military force, this article enhances our understanding of how narratives on childhood have consequences for global security. This article also displays significant opportunities to use the critical discursive approach to explore the diverse and complex experiences of children in conflict zones and (post)conflict societies.

There are 2 million United States military–attached children worldwide; however, the US government does not track the data of those who commit suicide. Military children’s daily lives are affected by the everyday and slow violence of constantly preparing for war. This article conducts a critical content analysis of family resiliency resources and children’s books to highlight the ongoing need for structural change. We conclude with recommendations on how to best address the specific needs of military-attached children.

This article draws on interviews with 40 participants (12–25 years) to examine how drug trafficking and armed violence militarizes the everyday lives of young residents in a deprived community in urban Brazil. The overall aim is to explore whether, and how, children and youth who are not involved in the drug trade are influenced by, engage with, and respond to militarist rationalities and manifestations. In addition, it frames militarization as resting upon and reinforcing structural inequalities.

Militarism shaped the physical dimensions of childhood in Tajikistan during the Tajik Civil War (1993–1997). Even in civilian zones, children interacted with military artifacts during daily play: children made slingshots from gas masks, played on rubble, and constructed whistles from bullets. Through a qualitative study exploring space construction and normalization among Tajik youth, the article examines the role physical remnants of militarism played in their childhoods. The analysis of their narratives explores how youth navigate and understand environments shaped by conflict.

In Kashmir, the entrenchment of political violence in the everyday has marked a shift from understanding Kashmiris as passive receivers of violence to agentic beings; however, much attention has not been paid to the experiences of children. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in one of the downtown neighbourhoods in Srinagar, this article would look at the everyday of children by focusing on their game playing. Analysing two games, that is, Military-Mujahid and PUBG (Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds), the article highlights how playing blurs the lines between spectacular and everyday, and actual and virtual/imaginary, establishing itself as a part of children’s everyday reality.

The article examines how Israeli Palestinian and Jewish middle-class mothers mediate military conflict to young children, through silence and talk. This mediation is underpinned by dissonance between the mandate to protect children from the adult world and to ready them for it, and between the idea of children as individuals and conflict as collective engagement. The article explores the discourses and practices used for managing this twofold dissonance, including differences in the privilege of silence for Palestinian and Jewish mothers.

Between 2014 and 2019, secondary school pupils from every state school in England were given the opportunity to visit the battlefields of the Western Front as part of the UK government’s flagship educational initiative to mark the centenary of the First World War. Based on empirical research conducted with pupil participants on the First World War Centenary Battlefield Tours Programme, this article explores the processes of militarisation present within these tours as well as the way young people participated in and made sense of these practices.

Military establishments the world over invest in multi-faceted and paradoxical relationships to children and childhood. This article aims to examine how the Japanese military today engages children and childhood in order to mold their public image, legitimize their missions, appease parents, and recruit the young.

My contribution engages in close-reading analysis of the award-winning picture book The Composition, written by Chilean author Antonio Skármeta and illustrated by Alfonso Ruano. It explores the political potential of fiction to recast children as creative subjects with political awareness and instruments to resist oppressive discourses and practices in the context of military dictatorships.