Children, Childhoods and Global Politics
Edited by J. Marshall Beier and Helen Berents
Published
Nov 9, 2023Page count
248 pagesISBN
978-1529232301Dimensions
234 x 156 mmImprint
Bristol University PressPublished
Nov 9, 2023Page count
248 pagesISBN
978-1529232325Dimensions
234 x 156 mmImprint
Bristol University PressPublished
Nov 9, 2023Page count
248 pagesISBN
978-1529232325Dimensions
234 x 156 mmImprint
Bristol University Press
Children, Childhoods and Global Politics
Though children have never been absent from international studies discourse, they are too often reduced to a few simplistic and unidimensional framings. This book seeks to recover children’s agency and to recognize the complex variety of childhoods and the global issues that affect them. Written by an international list of contributors from Europe, Africa, North America, and Australasia, chapters present highly nuanced accounts of children and childhoods across global political time and space split into three broad sections: imagined childhoods, governed childhoods, and lived childhoods.
Through its analysis, the book demonstrates how international relations is, somewhat paradoxically, quite deeply invested in a particular rendering of childhood as, primarily, a time of innocence, vulnerability, and incapacity.
"Extending and enriching our understanding of how children and childhoods are always already imbricated in the practices of global politics, the various essays in this impressive and diverse volume demonstrate the significance of children as subjects of political discourse and intervention, and agents of political change. The collection is both coherent and wide-ranging, articulating clearly not only why children and childhoods matter in global politics but also how these political actors and processes can be – indeed, are – pivotal to the constitution of global-local connections and to the reproduction of, or resistance to, existing structures of power." Laura J. Shepherd, The University of Sydney
“This groundbreaking volume demonstrates in brilliant and wide-ranging detail why studies of children and childhoods are not just peripheral but essential for understanding the realities and possibilities of global politics.” John Wall, Rutgers University
J. Marshall Beier is Professor in the Department of Political Science at McMaster University.
Helen Berents is Senior Lecturer in International Relations at Griffith University.
Introduction: Children and Childhoods in Global Political Perspective - J. Marshall Beier and Helen Berents
Part 1: Imagined Childhoods
1. ‘Anchor Babies’ and ‘Imposter Children’: Childhoods’ Representations in Global Migration Politics - Patrícia Nabuco Martuscelli
2. Creating Inclusive Reconciliation and Reporting Spaces with Children: Valuing Their Stories - Caitlin Mollica
3. Stories about Children Born of Violence: Counternarratives in the Peruvian Truth Commission’s Archive and Popular Culture - Ana Lucia Alonso Soriano
4. (Un)Recognition of Child Soldiers’ Agency in UN Peacekeeping Practice - Dustin Johnson
Part 2: Governed Childhoods
5. Contested Children’s and Young People’s Political Representation in Global Health - Anna Holzscheiter and Laura Pantzerhielm
6. The Representative Breakthrough? Children and Youth Representation in the Global Governance of Migration - Jonathan Josefsson
7. The Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict: A Normative Agenda and Children’s Agency in Armed Conflict - Vanessa Bramwell
8. In/visible Subjects: Global Migration Management and the Integration of Refugee Children into Schools in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia - Alebachew K. Haybano and Jennifer Riggan
9. Alone and on the Move: Unaccompanied Children in UK Parliamentary Debates 2015–2016 - Lesley Pruitt and Antje Missbach
10. Pathologies of Child Governance: Safe Harbor Laws and Children Involved in the Sex Trade in the United States - Robyn Linde
Part 3: Lived Childhoods
11. Childhood, Playing War, and Militarism: Beyond Discourses of Domination/ Resistance and Towards an Ethics of Encounter - Sean Carter and Tara Woodyer
12. Troubling Girl Power Environmentalism: Indigenous Girls, Climate Change Activism, and a Relational Ethic of Responsibility - Lindsay Robinson
13. Children’s Intifada: Children as Participants in a Violent Conflict - Timea Spitka
14. Children’s Agency and Co-construction of Everyday Militarism(s): Representations and Realities of War in Ukrainian Children’s Art, 2014–2022 - Kristina Hook and Iuliia Hoban
15. Centring the Demand for Critical Climate Justice Education - Bennett Collins and Ali Watson
