Concepedia

Children and Citizenship in Britain

Childhood · 1998 · 144 citations · 31 references

TL;DR

Discussions of citizenship in the 1980s and 1900s largely ignored children, focusing on individual rights and obligations while overlooking the importance of human association. The article argues that prevailing conceptions of citizenship exclude children and must be reconsidered. The authors employ a social model of citizenship that foregrounds interconnections among people, arguing that rights and obligations inherently presuppose deep social ties. By grounding citizenship in social associations, the authors show that children’s place in society becomes less problematic.

Abstract

In the 1980s and 1900s there has been a substantial amount of discussion around notions of citizenship. Given the marginal treatment of children in mainstream sociology in the 1980s, it is small wonder that no mention is made of children in these discussions. This article challenges most conceptions of citizenship as they currently stand in their exclusion of children. It adopts a social model of citizenship that emphasizes the ways in which people are connected to each other, rather than being viewed as acting as individualized, autonomous, rational beings separate from each other. The idea that citizenship is conferred upon people according to a system of `rights' and `obligations' should by its very nature assume that people are connected with others in profound ways. Distilling notions of rights, duties and obligations to those of `individuals' elides the crucial importance of human association. If people's associations with others form the starting point of ideas of citizenship, then the location of children within that society becomes less problematic.