A Difference-Centred Alternative to Theorization of Children's Citizenship Rights

TLDR

The rights revolution has spurred many theories of children’s rights, yet mainstream liberal accounts largely ignore children as citizens, treating them as “not‑yet‑citizens” due to their normative stance. The article proposes a difference‑centred theory of children’s citizenship rights grounded in feminist, anti‑racist, LGBTQ+ and other difference‑centric citizenship frameworks. It redefines children’s rights of liberty and equality by expanding liberal notions of liberty into relational agency and reframing equality as “differently equal,” thereby articulating children as active participants in multiple relationships. The analysis concludes that prevailing social and institutional practices must be altered because they serve as barriers that exclude and marginalize children’s citizenship rights based on real and constructed differences.

Abstract

The "rights revolution" has become a central feature of modern political consciousness and has resulted in a proliferation of theories about children's rights. Yet mainstream liberal theories in which children's rights are theorized rarely take children's rights as citizens seriously, due to the normative stance of liberal theories that construct children in terms of "not-yet-citizens". This article argues for a difference-centred theory of children's citizenship rights by situating the analysis within feminist, anti-racist, gay, lesbian and transgendered theories of citizenship that are difference-centred. It discusses an alternative, difference-centred, articulation of children's citizenship rights through an analysis of their rights of liberty and equality. Through a broadening of liberal, normative notions of liberty defined around exercising individuated autonomous decision-making or the participation in citizenry duties, the article re-defines children's rights of liberty in relational terms that addresses their agency and acknowledges their presence as participating subjects in the multiple relationships in which they interact. It also re-articulates their rights of equality from a mainstream liberal interpretation of "equality-as-same" to one that treats children as "differently equal" members of the public culture in which they are full participants. Normative social institutional practices and assumptions become the focus of the analysis, which concludes that these have to change as they act as barriers that exclude and marginalize children's citizenship rights on the basis of their difference (real and constructed) from an adult norm assumed of citizens.