Deepening our understanding: Collaboration through online peer-to-peer participatory action research with children
Child-led research is growing globally, yet there are still limitations for children's leadership in all phases of research. This article, co-written with adult and child researchers, examines child-led research undertaken online with 9 children from Ontario and Quebec over a one-year period. The article explores the process of participating in and collaborating on an online peer-to-peer participatory action research project from the brainstorming stage to recruitment, design, data collection, analysis, and dissemination of knowledge. While much literature exists on older children and youth leading research, this research provides a unique contribution to the literature on the possibilities of creating space for children ages 11 to 14 to lead research. This article finds that the child researchers most valued: (1) Play and fun; (2) Engaging in new experiences; and (3) Learning. The article concludes that child-led research is feasible, and it can create better research and provide a transformative opportunity for child and adult researchers.
Applying co-production principles in research: reflections from young people and academics
Co-production, a form of collaborative working, is guided by principles including valuing all participants, building on individual strengths, blurring distinctions between roles, delivering benefits for all participants, building support networks and supporting people to deliver work themselves. This article explores how co-production is understood by young people and researchers and how co-production principles can be applied within a research context. We identify challenges of implementing existing co-production frameworks in research and key areas to consider for future work.
The adult in the room: The push and pull of parental involvement in research with children
Parental involvement in research where children are the primary study participants is frequent but under-analyzed. To understand such dynamics in research with children, we examined children's (ages 8-14) interactions with parents who came in and out of view during our virtual interviews in our study, Photographing Health by Rural Adolescents in the MidwEst (PHRAME). We identified the pull and push of this adult involvement-a choreography in which children were active participants. Our analysis demonstrates that such interactions provide important data about how children navigated power dynamics, and also offer integral insights on how they were doing health and care.
How are children coping with COVID-19 health crisis? Analysing their representations of lockdown through drawings
Spain is one of the European countries most affected of COVID-19, and also the one with the most stringent restrictions for children. This study aims to explore how COVID-19 lockdown affects children by analysing 151 drawings from children in lockdown. Findings were represented in four main categories: (1) Activities; (2) Emotions; (3) Socialization; and (4) Academic. The results indicate the need to manage the lockdown situation taking into account also children's voices and by placing greater emphasis on social and inclusive policies to help alleviate the possible effects of the pandemic and the lockdown on them.
The child as a medium. Breakdown and possible resurgence of children's agency in the era of pandemic
This paper deals with the unpredictable outbreak of the pandemic, explaining its impact on the education system, and with structural flexibility as a way to face unpredictability, based on the generalisability and coordination of manifestations of agency. The pandemic has enhanced a narrative of the child as a medium of learning, which undermines children's agency. The example of the research project CHILD-UP (Children Hybrid Integration: Learning Dialogue as a way of Upgrading policies of Participation) is used to show how children's agency and structural flexibility in classroom interactions can be supported and analysed.
Engaging girls with disabilities through cellphilming: Reflections on participatory visual research as a means of countering violence in the Global South
Despite the fact that most countries have ratified the United Nations' Convention on the Rights of the Child, girls with disabilities experience multiple forms of violence and oppression. Using a critical approach to arts-based research, we argue that while disabled girls experience multiple vulnerabilities due to the structural conditions which exposed them to violence, the use of participatory visual methods allowed them to reframe their stories. This article discusses the implications for reconceptualizing diverse childhoods in relation to methodologies for empowering disabled girls.
Cañari children, cows and milk production: Toward ch'ixi temporalities in the Andes
This article considers the intersection of multiple and, at times, seemingly conflicting temporalities in Andean childhoods. We draw on Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui's scholarship on Andean sociology and our ethnographic research with Cañari families to argue that Cañari families' and children's relations with cows and milk production are fueled by both capitalist and Andean temporalities that cannot be thought as opposites. These temporal relations do not create confusion or limiting binaries but are, we propose, itinerant. We show how Cañari children's and cows' collective lives are knitted within ch'ixi temporalities.
The cost of school holidays for children from low income families
School holidays can be stressful periods for children from low-income families. Poor provision of appropriate childcare, limited access to enrichment activities, and food insecurity mean that children's health and well-being can suffer and their learning stagnate or decline. This article examines and documents the evidence that has emerged on this topic and aims to raise its profile and the impact on children's lives. It makes the case for further academic scrutiny of this unexamined and neglected subject.
Being an 'adolescent': The consequences of gendered risks for young people in rural Uganda
The behaviour of adolescents is recognised increasingly as having substantial and long-term consequences for their health. We examined the meaning of 'adolescence' in southern Uganda with HIV-positive young people aged 11-24 years. Adolescent girls and boys are described differently in the local language (Luganda). Adolescence is described as a behavioural rather than a life course category and an inherently dangerous one. The practices, risks and consequences of 'adolescent' behaviour are highly gendered. Local understandings of adolescence are likely to have a significant impact on the efficacy of interventions designed to minimise their 'risky behaviour'.
Amoral, im/moral and dis/loyal: Children's moral status in child welfare
This article is a discursive examination of children's status as knowledgeable moral agents within the Swedish child welfare system and in the widely used assessment framework BBIC. Departing from Fricker's concept of epistemic injustice, three discursive positions of children's moral status are identified: amoral, im/moral and dis/loyal. The findings show the undoubtedly moral child as largely missing and children's agency as diminished, deviant or rendered ambiguous. Epistemic injustice applies particularly to disadvantaged children with difficult experiences who run the risk of being othered, or positioned as reproducing or accommodating to the very same social problems they may be victimised by.
Lives on hold: A qualitative study of young refugees' resilience strategies
Although the literature on positive adjustment following traumatic events is growing, only a few studies have examined this phenomenon in young refugees. Using the social-ecological framework, the aim of this study was to identify factors and processes that according to young refugees promote their resilience. A total of 16 treatment-seeking refugees aged 13-21 years, living in the Netherlands, were interviewed. Data analysis revealed four resilience strategies: (1) acting autonomously, (2) performing at school, (3) perceiving support from peers and parents, and (4) participating in the new society. These strategies interacted with one another and demonstrated the interrelatedness between individuals and their social context. Having to wait long for a residence permit and being older appeared to negatively influence participants' resilience strategies. These findings suggest that resilience refers to a dynamic process that is context and time specific.
Re-interpreting: Narratives of childhood language brokering over time
This article probes how childhood experiences are actively taken into adult lives and thus challenges the unwitting and unintentional reproduction of an adult-child binary in childhood studies. We do this by analyzing interviews with one adult daughter of immigrants from Mexico to the United States at four points in time (ages 19, 26, 27, and 33). Using narrative analysis to examine the mutability of memory, we consider how Eva oriented herself to her childhood story, what was salient and invisible in each recount, the values she associated with the practice, and the meanings she took from her experiences. We show how Eva re-interpreted her experiences as an immigrant child language broker in relation to unfolding life events, showing her childhood to be very much alive in her adult life. Language brokering serves as one way in which to examine the interpenetration of childhood into adulthood, rather than being the focus per se.
Children's friendships in super-diverse localities: Encounters with social and ethnic difference
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.
A 'snapshot' of physical activity and food habits among private school children in India
Concerns about increasing obesity in poorer parts of the world, including India, have often been premised in terms of global shifts in activity levels and caloric consumption. Lifestyle changes have been documented in large cities, but we do not know whether these changes are reaching young people in less urban locations. This study used photo journals to explore children's perceptions of their food and activity habits in a remote Indian city. Children expressed interest in active pastimes, learning, and health, and indicated traditional, modern, local, and global influences in their lives. Findings offer context for research and interventions.
From the singular to the plural: Exploring diversities in contemporary childhoods in sub-Saharan Africa
The challenges that sub-Saharan Africa has faced in the post-colonial period have come to characterise the way the region is perceived. These narratives are especially evident in the various ways children's lives are discussed, leading to a particular focus on childhoods in difficult circumstances or at the margins. This has eclipsed the mundanities of everyday life for many children whose lives are not characterised by 'lacks'. This article seeks to move beyond an overwhelming focus on childhoods defined by what they lack by illustrating the multitude of childhoods which exist in the continent.
'Once upon a time …': Orphanhood, childhood studies and the depoliticisation of childhood poverty in southern Africa
Policy, interventions and research concerning southern African children remain dominated by a focus on AIDS-related orphanhood, although the association between orphanhood and disadvantage is highly questionable. I argue that the trope of the AIDS orphan serves a range of agendas, including for academic research. In particular, orphans represent the quintessential child-agent, celebrated in fairytales and fiction. Finally, I examine how this has led to a policy response - education bursaries - that cannot adequately address childhood poverty in the region.
Miku's mask: Fictional encounters in children's costume play
Children's engagement with Japanese toys and fictional characters has taken on new significance in the age of YouTube. Drawing on ethnographic research on technology-mediated play among 8- and 9-year-olds in Norway, this article shows how boundaries between "real" humans and "fake" non-humans are blurred and undermined when children take on the perspective of a fictional pop star known as Miku. I argue that YouTube provides a platform for children's playful experimentation with posthuman subjectivities, where they orient themselves toward the future not in terms of becoming adult but in terms of multiple becomings.
Sandwiches and subversion: Teachers' mealtime strategies and preschoolers' agency
Mealtimes are understudied processes in the social research on childhood. Our study uses ethnographic methods in two preschools in the southeastern United States to understand the types of strategies teachers use during meals and children's responses to these strategies. We identified three strategies teachers used to attempt to modify children's consumption: gatekeeping, directives, and hyperbolic justifications of consumption. We argue that children used agency to subvert to teachers' strategies using silent and verbal techniques, including attempting to open packages of restricted foods, pretending to eat, and refusing to eat. Their subversion manifested in either "dissent" or "feigned assent."
Economic Status, Community Danger and Psychological Problems among South African Children
An extensive literature links community violence and poverty in the US to psychological difficulties in children. To test the cross-national generalizability of these relationships, 625 young, South African mothers residing in black townships with different levels of community danger and material hardship rated their 6-year-olds on emotional functioning and behavioral problems. Most mothers were African, employed and of low educational attainment. Community danger was confirmed as a risk factor for anxiety, depression, aggression, opposition and low affability in children. A composite measure of socioeconomic status as indexed by education and job status was unrelated to behavioral and emotional adjustment. However, children experiencing material hardship had fewer problems related to behavioral self-control than children in families with greater access to material resources.