Towards Children’s Rights Studies

Children’s rights occupy a paradoxical and ambiguous place within childhood studies. Following the adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), they have become a central theme within childhood scholarship. Until recent years, though, they have received limited theoretical attention (Quennerstedt, 2013; Reynaert , Bouverne-De Bie, & Vandevelde , 2009). Scholars’ engagement with children’s rights has also been characterised by a strong, although not always explicit, normativity (Alanen, 2010). As Reynaert, Bouverne-De Bie and Vandevelde (2012) point out, academic debates about children’s rights have actually been marked by a polarisation between ‘believers’ and ‘opponents’. The first largely adhere, without critical distance , to the children’s rights project, whose emphasis on children’s so-called ‘participation rights’ resonates with childhood studies’ commitment to contribute to the recognition of children and young people’s competences and agency (Alanen, 2010). Opponents, for their part, usually move their critique from cultural relativist positions, challenging the universalist claims of children’s rights without engaging with their possible value in promoting greater respect for children (Reynaert, Bouverne-De Bie, and Vandevelde, 2012, p. 156).

In this context, many childhood scholars have called for the development of the study of children’s rights and for engaging more critically with the issue (Alanen, 2010; Hanson, 2014; Quennerstedt, 2013; Reynaert et al., 2012). Hanson (2014) and Quennerstedt (2013) advocate, in particular, for a clearer distinction between the study of children’s rights, which should entail theoretical ambitions and a critical and reflexive posture , and efforts aimed at enhancing their respect. The UNCRC , Quennerstedt summarises, is ‘not something to preach, but something to analyse’ (2013, p. 239). In a similar vein, Reynaert et al. (2012) propose to develop a field of ‘critical children’s rights studies’, which would reveal the processes, values and logics underpinning the practices associated with the idea of children’s rights. Within this approach, critique is meant to be constructive because the knowledge produced by academics ultimately aims ‘to change these practices in the direction of a greater respect for the human dignity of children ’ (Reynaert et al., 2012, p. 166). For Alanen, who calls for working towards a more reflexive sociology of children’s rights (2010), the inherently normative nature of rights, which mobilise ideas of the good or desirable childhood, would inevitably lead scholars to address more openly issues of values and norms, and to problematise their own standpoint.

Despite setting forth useful guiding principles for the emerging field of children’s rights studies, these proposals leave several fundamental questions unanswered. These concern, in particular, the appropriate intellectual resources allowing one to theorise children’s rights and the type of critical and reflexive posture to be adopted. Calls for theorising children’s rights emerge, in fact, at a time when childhood studies is going through a moment of self-doubt concerning its own capacity to shed light on the complexity of childhood (James, 2010; Prout, 2005; Tisdall & Punch, 2012). Prout argues (2005), in particular, that the field remains entrenched in an overly static conception of society drawn from modernist sociology, which crystallises in dichotomies such as structure /agency, adult/child and being/becoming . The conception of childhood as a social construction and the idea that children have agency, which have become sorts of undebated ‘mantras’ within the field (Tisdall & Punch, 2012, p. 251), may also need to be more critically interrogated.

Critique may also take different forms. Should children’s rights sociologists espouse a minimalist conception of critique (Sayer, 2009, pp. 769–772), which consists, like the child in Andersen’s novel The Emperor’s New Clothes, in ‘unmasking’ or reducing illusion in society, opposing scientific truths to the actors’ beliefs? Or should they instead engage more openly, as Sayer suggests (2009), with moral and political issues, challenging relations of domination and pointing, by mobilising alternative ideas of the common good, towards brighter futures? While these questions, which imply distinct postures and different kinds of reflexivity, do not exhaust the possibilities of critique, they are vital for children’s rights studies, especially in a world where critical thought, despite its unprecedented ubiquity, seems to have lost its transformative potential (Boltanski, 2009; Latour, 1991/1993).

Children’s rights scholars therefore face at least three interwoven challenges: exploring new theoretical horizons, clarifying their critical stance and reflecting on their own normative engagement with their object of study. In this chapter I wish to contribute to the reflections on these issues by drawing on recent debates within French sociology, opposing Pierre Bourdieu’s critical sociology, also known as the sociology of domination , and the pragmatic sociologies of two Bourdieusian ‘dissidents’, Luc Boltanki and Bruno Latour , who developed, respectively, a sociology of critique (Boltanski, 2009; Boltanski & Thévenot, 1991) and a sociology of translation, also known as actor-network theory (ANT) (Latour, 1991/1993, 2005). Moving away from conceptions of theories as general and abstract frameworks, typically holding strong truth claims, I adopt a pragmatic understanding of theories, which sees them as ‘tools’ (Garnier, 2014) and assesses their value according to the task to be accomplished. This approach, which puts all theories, at least a priori, on the same level, opens up the space for combining multiple, complementary and possibly competing approaches. While other authors have underscored the value of Bourdieu’s sociological thought (Alanen, Broker, & Mayall, 2015), Boltanski’s sociology (Garnier, 2014) or ANT (Prout, 2005) for childhood studies, my goal here is to explore the potential of mobilising jointly these resources in the study of children’s rights and, more specifically, of policies aimed at fostering children and young people’s participation.

The chapter first summarises the controversies within contemporary French sociology and shows how critical and pragmatic resources may productively add to children’s rights studies. Drawing on a recent enquiry into the practices of participation specialists in Switzerland, it then illustrates how these ‘unexpected allies’ may be productively combined in child and youth participation research .

Debates Within French Sociology

It would be vain to attempt to summarise here the works of Bourdieu, Boltanski and Latour , whose innovative and evolving analytical thought defies simple accounts. I shall therefore limit myself to revisiting two central debates: the articulation between structures and agency, and the role of critique and reflexivity.

Structures, Agency and the (In)stability of the Social Order

A core opposition between Bourdieu’s sociology and his pragmatic ‘dissidents’ lies in the weight given, respectively, to social structures and to people’s competences . Bourdieu posits that the social space is divided into different relational and autonomous fields, such as the political, the bureaucratic or the academic fields, each governed by its own logic (1994, 1984/2002). On his account (1979/1984, 1994), people pursue strategies of distinction by accumulating different types of capital (economic, cultural, social etc.). Their practices are determined, namely, by the interplay between their dispositions, or habitus, embodied largely during childhood and therefore dependent on social origin, and their objective structural position within the concerned field.

Moving away from rationalist theories of action , Bourdieu assumes, through the concept of illusio, that the actors adhere to the rules of the game prevailing within each field, whose stakes go largely unquestioned (1997/2003, pp. 237–242). In other words, people are caught up in and by the game they play (e.g. publishing to gain cultural capital in the academic field, producing laws to accumulate juridical capital in the bureaucratic field), even though these stakes may appear to be an illusion to external observers. Accordingly, Bourdieu’s sociology often consists in questioning, through a thorough historical examination of the constitution of fields, the epistemological and political foundations of taken-for-granted categories and assumptions. His analysis of the genesis of the state (1994, pp. 101–133) sheds light, in particular, on the ‘symbolic violence’ through which government devices (laws, schools, bureaucracies etc.) universalise a particular truth, or doxa, thereby shaping our principles of vision and division.

Although Bourdieu tries to prevent deterministic interpretations of his theory, underscoring, for instance, that the habitus may change over time and that its manifestations in each situation are not fully predictable (1994), his sociology has often been accused of being overly fatalistic. This is indeed one of the main critiques addressed to Bourdieu by Boltanski and Latour . To avoid imposing on the actors a pre-existing social order, heavily charged by sociological constructs such as field, structures or habitus, both authors emphasise people’s critical and reflexive competences and move the focus of their enquiries towards the controversies that characterise the fabric of the social (Boltanski & Thévenot, 1991; Latour, 1991/1993). They argue that sociology should not posit the social order but explain how it emerges through situated practices. The key task for sociology is therefore, as Latour puts it (2005), to ‘follow the actors’ as close as possible. This approach does not entail simply conveying the actors’ analyses but, more specifically, following the operations through which they (un)make the social order in specific situations (e.g. by valuing certain people or things, by forming or dismantling groups), without judging whether these operations are valid, just or true from the sociologist’s perspective.

To explore social order in the making, Boltanski and Latour resort to the notion of test or trial (épreuve) (Boltanski, 2009; Boltanski & Thévenot, 1991; Latour, 2005). This notion has received different definitions, but for the sake of this chapter it may be understood as an event, or moment of uncertainty, in which different things (people, arguments, projects etc.) are pitted against one another in order to establish their relative value and, ultimately, a legitimate hierarchy between them (think, by analogy, of sports contests or school examinations). Boltanski and Chiapello observe:

It is […] no exaggeration to think that a society (or the state of a society) may be defined by the character of the tests it sets itself, through which the social selection of people is conducted, and by conflicts over the more or less just nature of those tests. (2005, p. 32)

Sociology, Reflexivity and Critique

Reflexivity is essential to Bourdieu’s critical sociology. In line with his theory of practice, he posits (1997/2003) that social scientists’ adhesion to the rules of the game prevailing in the academic field restricts their ability to thoroughly reflect on the beliefs and assumptions that underpin their endeavours. His posture towards reflexivity does not primarily call, as often happens, for an introspective (and narcissistic) return of the subject on oneself. He advocates instead for an ‘epistemic reflexivity’ which entails addressing three main biases (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992/2014): those resulting from the researcher’s origin and social position; those related to his or her place within the academic field; and the intellectualist bias , whereby the scientist ignores the fundamental breach between the logic of practice, which entails being and acting in the world, and the logic (and luxury) of the scholastic reason, a posture that implies taking distance from the constraints of action and that inevitably alters people’s practices—namely, through the tools used to gather and analyse data (questionnaires, codes etc.). Bourdieu’s reflexivity thus implies a constant application of critical thought to the epistemic assumptions of one’s own field of study. Besides the generalised exercise of critique of all by all within scientific fields, it requires, in other words, a critical sociology of sociology (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992/2014, p. 111). Although Bourdieu acknowledges the impossibility of assuming a totalising perspective of one’s own standpoint, renouncing thereby to an absolutist claim to objectivity, he is confident that the historicisation of science will guarantee progress towards rational knowledge (1997/2003, pp. 171–176).

Despite Bourdieu’s nuanced view of reflexivity, Latour and Boltanski are unconvinced about the epistemic break he establishes between ordinary people and the scientist, who is given the role of arbiter and seems to possess superior knowledge and reflexive capacities. In line with their ambition to rehabilitate people’s competences and to study controversies, they therefore both postulate symmetry as a method for treating sociology’s objects of enquiry evenly (Guggenheim & Potthast, 2012). Latour’s symmetry principle is both epistemic and ontological. Based on ethnographic observations of scientists’ work in laboratories, ANT rejects the idea that science distinguishes itself from other practices by a supposedly higher rationality—like it discards, by the way, similar distinctions separating adults from children, or moderns from savages (Latour, 2006). If there is a difference between the poles of these dichotomies, ANT contends, it is to be searched for in their respective capacities to create more or less stable assemblages of heterogeneous material, including human and non-human beings (Latour, 2005, pp. 88–93). ANT’s symmetry also aims to rehabilitate the role played by objects , conceived as sociotechnical hybrids (Latour, 2000), in the construction of the social. Accordingly, ANT aims to replace ‘social constructivism’, and its exclusive emphasis on humans, meanings and discourses, with a broader ‘constructivism’, where humans and non-humans are given equal attention .

While Boltanski also acknowledges the role played by objects in the fabric of the social, his symmetry principle is mainly concerned with the existence of a plurality of equally legitimate moral and political orders, which he understands as ‘orders of worth’ or ‘regimes of justification’ (Boltanski & Thévenot, 1991). These orders, he argues, embody different principles through which people may assess, in each situation, the respective value of beings. This model distinguishes itself from Bourdieu’s dialectic between habitus and field, as people possess the capacity to draw on many, and possibly conflicting, ‘regimes of justification’ in each situation and may find themselves, at different moments, in situations requiring the mobilisation of distinct principles. While this approach is primarily concerned with microlevel dynamics, it also allows one to transcend the situation by showing how people draw on a plurality of narratives in order to justify their actions (Blokker, 2011).

Latour and Boltanski also criticise Bourdieu’s critical posture. Latour is deeply sceptical about the possible effects of academic critique on the actors’ practices, especially if critical thought is not relevant to them. The key task for sociology, he posits (2005), is not to produce critique but to describe or, better, to ‘deploy’ the actors, showing how they constitute networks of mediation—that is, actor networks of different size and composition capable of mobilising resources so as to redefine the boundaries of the social. Asymmetries, power and domination do not disappear from the enquiry; they become a matter of relative size between heterogeneous collectives (Latour, 1991/1993).

Boltanski recognises the interest of critical sociology, but he also argues that it is extremely difficult, including for social scientists, to analyse a normative dispute (e.g. about ideas of the good childhood) while being engaged in it (Basaure, 2011, p. 371). His sociology is therefore conceived of as a metacritical project aimed at exploring the actor’s critical capacities (Boltanski, 2009). While distancing himself from Bourdieu, Boltanski does not abandon the emancipatory ambitions of sociology: he understands his approach mainly as a method to establish the necessary distance from normative disputes and as a ‘production detour’ aimed to strengthen sociology’s capacity to anchor its critique in social reality (2009, p. 47).

Resources for Children’s Rights Studies

The above debates offer potentially fruitful resources to children’s rights scholars. Theoretically, pragmatists invite us to set aside, at least for the sake of description, the debates about the relative importance of structures and agency , focusing instead on how order emerges from situated practices. By locating action in the collective work of humans and non-humans, the flat and hybrid ontology proposed by ANT provides fertile ground for overcoming the structure/agency binary. Boltanski’s metacritical stance, for its part, opens up the space for analysing, with the necessary distance, the moral and political logic of the controversies surrounding children’s rights. This posture may prove particularly useful if the actors’ normativity, as in the case of the participation specialists discussed in the next section, resonates strongly with our own .Footnote 1

Bourdieu, Boltanski and Latour also invite us, in different and complementary ways, to scrutinise the fabric of collective beings, including the categories lying at the core of our own research endeavours, such as childhood, youth and rights. By underscoring the complicity of social sciences in the construction of dominant representations of the state , Bourdieu (1994, pp. 104–107) reminds us, in particular, that radical doubt is a necessary ally when approaching law, public policies and the construction of so-called ‘social problems’.

However, the most valuable contribution of the debates outlined above is, perhaps, the possibility of establishing a dynamic and productive tension between the critical and the pragmatic postures (Bénatouïl, 1999; Buzelin, 2005). As Bénatouïl suggests, in fact, the cooperation between these approaches may create ‘an odd circular relationship of mutual objectification’ whereby each theory ‘might be the theory of the other’s practice’ (1999, p. 391). By overcoming the science/practice divide and by putting the critique produced by sociologists on the same level as any other critical practice, pragmatic sociology may, in particular, allow childhood scholars to be more aware of the limits of their critique and of the categories on which it stands. Bourdieu’s reflexive sociology may provide, for its part, the resources for recontextualising the pragmatic stance—namely, by putting situated action in a social, political and historical perspective. Both Boltanski (2009) and Latour (2005, pp. 247–262) recognise, in fact, the limits of situated analysis and the possibility, if not the necessity, to combine it with critical sociology, whose stable and powerful constructs may strengthen the political relevance of sociological thought. After all, Latour contends, ‘The mistake [of critical sociology] was not to wish to have a critical edge, but to reach for it at the wrong moment and before the other tasks of sociology had been fulfilled’ (2005, pp. 249–250).

An Application to Child and Youth Participation Research

Like childhood studies , child participation research has recently come under increasing scrutiny. Scholars have underscored, in particular, its incapacity to shed light on the tensions and ambiguities that inevitably characterise participation practices, calling for a better understanding of the work of participatory mechanisms and the roles played by adults therein (Graham & Fitzgerald, 2010; Wyness, 2013). This section pursues this line of enquiry. Drawing from a mixed-methods ethnographic research on local policies in the cantons and municipalities of French-speaking Switzerland, it explores, in particular, the practices of specialists, usually called ‘delegates’, tasked with promoting children’s and young people’s participation and citizenship.Footnote 2 The study, which took place between 2012 and 2015, involved participant observation (e.g. planning and running children’s councils, participating in the conception of projects involving young people), a survey of 159 municipalities (Poretti, 2015), 29 semistructured face-to-face interviews and 13 group discussions, which reached a total of 43 people,Footnote 3 including 9 policy-makers (politicians, senior executives), and 27 childhood and youth specialists (delegates, child-protection staff, academic experts etc.).

The enquiry borrowed from pragmatic sociologists two interrelated methodological principles: the principle of symmetry , which implies entering the field as if the world were flat (ontologically, theoretically, morally etc.), giving equal weight to the different beings, be they practitioners, academics or things; and the commitment to follow the actors as closely as possible, taking their arguments seriously and avoiding judgements about their respective value or truth. From Bourdieu, the research borrowed instead the ambition to systematically locate situated action into its historical, social and political settings. From both pragmatic and critical sociology, finally, the study derived the need to pay specific attention to the operations aimed at assembling the social into collectives or groups in order to shed light on their moral and political logic. This approach results in a posture that might be termed constructivist, provided that this notion is not opposed to realism, nor confused with social constructivism . In line with pragmatists (Boltanski, 2009; Latour, 2003), I use the building metaphor to highlight the labour-intensive processes through which common worlds are fabricated in situations open to critique. Not only are these worlds real in the sense that they materialise in concrete beings (people, laws, categories of thought etc.), but the agreement about their nature and identities cannot be separated from the actors’ assessments of their correspondence with ‘reality’—what Boltanski terms ‘reality tests ’ (2009)—no matter how ‘subjective’ or ‘constructed’ these assessments may be. This section outlines, specifically, the political trajectory of child and youth participation in Switzerland, the actors’ justifications and critiques, and their efforts aimed at stabilising a common world .

The Rise of Participation

Youth participation emerged on the Swiss public policy agenda during the 1960s, in conjunction with what was then called ‘the youth problem’.Footnote 4 Interestingly, we owe the first comprehensive analysis of the situation of young people in Switzerland, as well as the first major attempt to institutionalise their participation, to four sociologists, working under a mandate emanating from youth organisations and national authorities. Their study (Arnold, Bassand, Crettaz, & Kellerhals, 1971) associates youth unrest with a ‘crisis of socialization’ resulting from the failure of ‘traditional socializing agents’ (families, schools and communities) to transmit to the young a coherent set of values and norms, as well as with the progressive constitution of young people as a separate social group possessing its own ‘language’ and ‘subculture’. The participation of young people in public life, through the mediation of consultative devices and youth associations (Arnold et al., 1971, p. 164), is thus seen as a way to reduce their marginalisation in society. Building on this study, in 1971 the Swiss Federal Department of Home Affairs tasked a working group with outlining the principles of a comprehensive youth policy. The working group recommended, in particular, to extend the emerging youth policy to children and to appoint a national ‘delegate to the youth problems’, who would ensure that the interests of the young are taken into account in all relevant policy domains (Département fédéral de l’intérieur, 1973).

More than 40 years later, Switzerland has yet to develop an overarching childhood and youth policy and the proposal to nominate a national delegate has not been followed through. However, the promotion of the participation of the young, generally under the responsibility of dedicated delegates working within broader devices aimed at promoting social cohesion, leisure or sports, has gradually become an integral part of cantonal and municipal policies. Since Switzerland’s ratification of the UNCRC in 1997, the number of childhood and youth delegates in the French-speaking region of the country has thus risen more than ten-fold (from two at the end of the 1990s to more than 20 today). Whereas laws and policy documents generally focus on all young people below the age of 18 or 25, administrative services typically distinguish interventions targeting children from those aimed at young people, usually setting the boundary between childhood and youth at the age of 12 or 13 (Poretti, 2015), a distinction that is also reflected in the delegates’ mandates. With the notable exception of the childhood delegation of the city of Lausanne, which engages regularly with children below the age of 12, most participation policies mainly target adolescents and young adults .

The delegates, who since 2009 join efforts through a regional umbrella organisation, the Conférence Romande des délégué(e)s à l’enfance et à la jeunesse (CRDEJ) (French-speaking Conference of Childhood and Youth Delegates), have often been trained as social workers or educators and habitually possess, at the moment of appointment, several years of professional experience within local administrations or civil society organisations, including as leaders of youth organisations. Their function within public administrations is typically conceived through the metaphor of the ‘transmission belt’ (Délégués romands à la jeunesse, 2005). They are generally the primary entry point for children and young people wishing to bring their concerns to the attention of politicians. They are also usually involved, alone or with the backing of small teams, in running children or youth councils, parliaments or commissions, and in supporting so-called ‘youth projects’—that is, small-scale initiatives originating from young people, such as the creation of new sports grounds or the launch of prevention campaigns. These activities , coupled with their personal trajectories, provide them, at least in their own eyes and in those of their superiors, with the necessary legitimacy to speak on behalf of children and youth—that is, to define the boundaries between and within these collectives, as well as their characteristics, needs and rights.

Justifications and Critiques

The delegates typically contend that attitudes towards children and young people, including within the state , do not sufficiently recognise the competences of the young and their potential contribution to the polity. Children, they say, are often invisible in policy-making and tend to be treated with condescendence, while young people, despite greater visibility, suffer from a negative image and are perceived as deviant, unruly or disengaged. Against this backdrop, the delegates portray children and young people, as an official document puts it, as ‘full-fledged actors in society’ and as ‘a driving force of renewal’ (Ville de Sion, 2011, p. 4). Their efforts thus concentrate on the one hand on gathering and promoting children and young people’s ‘voices’ and projects, while on the other they work tirelessly to improve the image of the young, striving to ensure that politicians, public officials and the public take children and young people seriously.

Childhood and youth are nonetheless also seen as periods of inexperience and immaturity, and the delegates frequently emphasise the need to ‘support’ and ‘mentor’ the young if they are to thrive, lead a healthy life, and become autonomous and responsible citizens. Based on these premises, the delegates typically portray themselves both as ‘spokespersons’, or ‘relays of the creativity of the young’ (Délégués romands à la jeunesse, 2005), and as ‘coaches’, a pedagogical stance that emphasises benevolent guidance and encouragement. This double posture , where the balance between ‘relaying’ and ‘coaching’ depends on the delegates’ assessment of children and young people’s performance in each situation, justifies multiple interventions in the participation processes so as to achieve pedagogically, morally or politically appropriate results. Most delegates recognise, albeit to different degrees, that the tests enshrined in participation devices, such as speaking in public, coordinating meetings and drafting project documents, tend to favour older children and young people with higher educational achievements. Within the limits of their resources, many of them therefore strive to offer additional support to younger children and to the most disadvantaged, such as by helping them draft the required documents or by training them in communication skills.

Despite the relative political success of child and youth participation , the delegates frequently have to justify their work, both with their hierarchical superiors (senior executives or elected politicians), who often question the lack of visibility and the impact of their endeavours, and with other childhood and youth professionals . Child-protection specialists contend, in particular, that participation deals mainly with ‘the young who do well’ and is, as a result, of less value than protection, which addresses the urgent needs of ‘those who do badly’. To counter these critiques , the delegates typically strive to provide proof that all kinds of people actually take part in participation processes. While some delegates also contend that participation, by providing a meaningful role in society, may have a broader preventive role, others, often those who have worked with youth organisations, strongly reject this argument, claiming that the link between participation and prevention is hard to prove and that participation is essentially a matter of citizenship.

The delegates are often critical of local bureaucracies, whom they describe as dominated by a static, segmented and outdated culture. Within this context, they see themselves as the holders of a more flexible, creative and dynamic—in sum, younger—way of working. They also recurrently criticise senior executives and politicians for pursuing objectives in terms of personal reputation that ‘have nothing to do’ with the interests of the young. In fact, the delegates are chiefly concerned that participation may serve as an alibi to their hierarchy. Looking back at a participatory workshop where she facilitated dialogue between young people and senior public officials, Anne, a delegate with longstanding engagement with marginalised populations, shares her deep frustration:

There are multiple objectives, and at that moment something slips, it slips because the political is there, visibility is there, communication is there, and it all turns into a masquerade. […] And I am the armed wing of that, and I feel the need to run away. Well, I say to myself ‘It is through me that this happens!’. […] And, really, I feel that [the young] are instrumentalized, for me it is very difficult.

Commenting on the same event, Nathalie observes: ‘kids will not be heard by these politicians, […] we have to make the interface, because otherwise it will not happen’. In fact, while they recognise the vital role played by politicians in fostering the inclusion of the young in society (and, subsidiarily, in guaranteeing them a stable job), the political often appears as a potential threat from which children and young people have to be protected.

Significantly, the very origin of the act of delegation instituting the delegates is surrounded by ambiguity. During an informal conversation on the margins of a meeting of the CRDEJ, Martine, an experienced delegate, notably asked: ‘In fact, is it children who delegate us the power to speak on their behalf, or is it the state, which delegates us a certain power?’ While her colleagues claimed to be representing the young, they admitted that the answer was, institutionally, far from clear. In fact, while working within state structures , most delegates see themselves as the spearhead of a broader social movement, as a progressive force whose main goal is, in Paolo’s words, to ‘infiltrate a bit everywhere, so as to put youth on the table’ (field notes, 2013). Many delegates in fact maintain varying allegiances with civil society organisations, which Martine portrays as a useful ‘counter-power to the state’. When regulations, or their superiors, prevent them from pursuing what they believe are the interests of the young, some delegates do not hesitate to mobilise their network to realise their projects outside the state’s structures , such as by creating dedicated non-governmental organisations. Remarkably, the delegates’ uncertain loyalties often lead their superiors to ‘call them to order’ and have earned them the widely used qualifier of ‘free electrons’—an attribute that many delegates actually do not dislike.

Building a Common World

Child and youth participation occupies a marginal position within local political and administrative arrangements. The resources allocated to education , health and child protection, in particular, bear no comparison with those dedicated to participation, which leads Martine to observe that participation is doubtlessly the ‘poor relative’ of childhood and youth policies . During a meeting of the CRDEJ, Tristan, for his part, bitterly noted: ‘[O]ur weight is anyway minimal. […] Issues of citizenship and youth parliaments are our core concerns, but they only interest us’.

Surrounded by controversies and, as a cantonal delegate acknowledges, ‘largely swimming upstream’, the delegates strive to strengthen their legitimacy by building alliances with other professionals , by associating with academic experts and by taking part in a variety of overlapping regional, national and international networks. Accordingly, the very existence of the CRDEJ allows the delegates, as one of the founders of the association notes, ‘to show that they are not alone’. He also recalls, however, that the creation of the CRDEJ, triggered by the need to strengthen the coherence between the practices of the increasing number of participation specialists, amounted to a difficult search for ‘a minimum common denominator’, which translates, in the association’s statutes, in the ambition to ‘defend collectively the interests of children and young people and to promote a proactive policy in this domain’ (CRDEJ, 2009/2014).

In fact, despite coming together as ‘delegates’, the members of the CRDEJ have different personal and professional trajectories; they also focus on different target populations (youth, children and youth, children), work at different levels (cantonal or municipal) and in different capacities (delegate, coordinator, chief of youth service, youth projects promoter etc.), and have different prerogatives. The delegates of the cities of Geneva and La Chaux-de-Fonds, in particular, are at the head of sizeable services and manage large human and financial resources. The size of these devices is primarily linked to the association of participation with issues such as street social work, sociocultural activities in neighbourhoods or daycare. In contrast, the majority of delegates, who focus essentially on participation, manage small teams and have very limited budgetary autonomy .

Looking back at the short history of the CRDEJ, Martine observes: ‘[T]he association has become, during the years, a big boat, but it also remains fragile’. While this fragility is partly linked to the heterogeneity of its membership, the association’s capacity to stabilise its identity and to promote a coherent agenda is also challenged by external forces. Martine explains, in particular, that many municipalities appoint delegates as ‘a means to tackle the growing security and social integration problems’, rather than as a measure aimed at promoting participation and citizenship. As these delegates ask to join the CRDEJ, consequently, the association is under pressure to clarify its membership criteria and, more broadly, its political aims and ambitions, a task that, to date, it has been unable to address, largely due to a lack of internal consensus.

Pragmatic and Critical Perspectives on Child and Youth Participation

The above account presents us with a world composed of a variety of actors connected by more or less stable associations . In this world, the delegates and the participatory mechanisms under their responsibility occupy centre stage—they have become, as Callon would put it (1986), an ‘obliged point of passage’ in a process of translation. Their practices cannot be understood, however, without accounting for the work of other people, such as academics and politicians, and for the simultaneous constitution of other collectives , including children, young people, the state or civil society. In the remaining part of this chapter I illustrate some of the analytical possibilities of the pragmatic and critical stances of French sociology by applying their resources to the analysis of the politics of representation , and of the moral and political order emerging from participation practices .

The Politics of Representation

Bourdieu contends that subaltern populations, such as children or youth, can exist as a group—that is, as forces able to legitimately speak in the public space —only through persons or organisations acting as their spokespersons (2001). Yet the figure of the spokesperson, typified, for instance, by delegates or academics speaking on behalf of the young, is not without problems. According to Boltanski (2009), this figure is inherently ambiguous because the interests of the representative can never be made to fully coincide with those of the group he or she is meant to represent. Suspicion, in other words, is always there: aren’t the delegates, after all, as a critical scholar once asked me, ‘mainly working to defend their personal interests and to justify their own existence?’. Moreover, far from acting as a ‘transmission belt’ between the young and politicians, a metaphor that suggests the possibility of transmitting meaning without change, spokespersons take an active part in a process of translation (Callon & Latour, 2006, pp. 12–13), which inexorably entails the transformation of the ‘voices’ of the young, the possibility of betrayal and, paradoxically, the silencing of the persons they pretend to represent (Callon, 1986, p. 196). Despite people’s best intentions, delegation may therefore legitimately be conceived, in line with Bourdieu (2001), as an act of political alienation , whereby the plurality of the group is inevitably neglected and the representative cannot but usurp, at least to some extent, the voices of the represented.

Bourdieu also argues that delegation is an inherently paradoxical ‘act of magic’ (2001), which creates, in the same movement, the delegate and the group they represent. Indeed, while youth, as Bourdieu suggests, may well be ‘just a word’ (1984/2002)—albeit not an innocent one, as it often silences the existence of multiple youths, varying in terms of gender, origin or class—the appointment of dedicated delegates contributes, literally, to bringing youth into existence: if children and young people can be legitimately represented and spoken about, then they truly exist as social groups. The act of delegation therefore closely ties together, relationally, the respective destinies and identities of the young and of their spokespersons. The delegates’ claim to be acting on a delegation emanating from the young and not, as it could legitimately be argued, on a nomination by local authorities, appears therefore under a new light. Caught up, as Bourdieu would contend (1994), in and by the game prevailing in their field, which implies working selflessly to promote the interests of children and young people, the delegates implicitly underscore the vital link connecting them with the groups they claim to represent. This posture contributes to removing the social and political conditions that give them the power to represent children and young people, and to shape the tests that will determine their value.

The Logics of an Emerging Social Order

The above findings also present us, in line with ANT’s emphasis on hybrids , with a proliferation of uneasily classifiable entities, including children, young people and the delegates. Participation specialists, in particular, treat children and young people as both beings and becomings , shedding light on the situated, emergent and ambiguous worth of the young, whose citizenship depends on their capacity to withstand the tests embedded in participatory mechanisms. The metaphor of the ‘free electrons’ used by politicians and senior public officials to qualify the delegates is also particularly telling. Borrowed from physics, where it designates the electrons located at the periphery of the atom, loosely bound to its nucleus and therefore likely to drift randomly to other atoms, the metaphor illustrates particularly well the delegates’ marginal position within local governmental structures , and their elusive and shifting associations . Working at the interface between the young and politicians, the delegates often blur the distinction between state and civil society, both in their discourses and through their practices and alliances, to the point that their actual allegiances are a matter of controversy . If, as I have argued, they may betray the voices of the young, they may also forsake the state—the frequent ‘calls to order’ of their superiors are, in this respect, highly revealing. Of course, as Anne admits, the delegates’ ‘room for manoeuvre is very limited’, but their objectives and practices remain unpredictable. They are not simple implementers of law and policy documents: they interpret, contextualise and transform them, as far as possible, so as to fit their own idea of justice.

The marginality of the delegates, the intense critical activity surrounding their endeavours and the paucity of efforts aimed at involving children below the age of 12 also draw the boundaries of the narrow and fragile political consensus about the citizenship of the young. In this respect, the strong resistance faced by the majority of delegates, who justify participation through narratives of rights, contrasts with the relative success of those associating participation with more consensual narratives of health, prevention and education , who have managed in the past to significantly increase the size of their collectives (in the form of devices assembling people, policy documents, target populations, buildings etc.). The quick look at the political trajectory of participation presented in the previous section also indicates that its rise is often linked to the desire to develop educative and preventive measures aimed at tackling so-called ‘youth problems’, whether they are framed in terms of intergenerational gaps, social integration, risky behaviours or deviance. The emancipatory narrative accompanying child and youth participation policies is therefore only part of the story. The Swiss case suggests, in fact, that participation practices are not simply, nor necessarily, about the recognition of children and young people’s agency , ‘voice’ and citizenship: they always pursue a variety of overlapping and ambivalent moral and political objectives, including, in particular, citizenship education, prevention and the promotion of a positive image of the young, thereby inevitably favouring and producing certain kind of subjectivities .

Conclusion

Today, children’s rights studies face complex challenges, in terms of theorising, critical posture and reflexivity . This chapter first revisited contemporary debates between the critical and the pragmatic stances of French sociology, suggesting the possibility, if not the necessity, of jointly mobilising these ‘unexpected allies’. It then applied their respective resources to the study of the practices of delegates tasked with promoting child and youth participation in Swiss localities, thereby offering complementary insights into the politics of participation. While Bourdieu invites us to critically scrutinise the paradoxical logic of the act of delegation and to locate participation within relational fields, pragmatists call for a thicker ethnographic description of how heterogeneous beings of varying size, including the delegates, sociologists, politicians, laws, financial resources and categories of thought, contribute to the emergence, in concrete situations, of a certain kind of social order. By acknowledging the hybrid nature of beings, ANT also opens up the space for rethinking the binary categories we often use for studying children’s rights, such as child-adult or state-civil society.

The debates within French sociology may also contribute to moving forward our reflections on critique and reflexivity. The metacritical posture proposed by Boltanski establishes a suitable distance from the controversies surrounding children’s rights, where scholarly critique is given equal status to that of other forms of critique and becomes, as such, part of the enquiry. A pragmatic approach aimed at ‘following the actors ’ also opens up the space for acknowledging the constraints of action and for anchoring academic critique within the actors’ reality, thereby potentially strengthening its relevance. Bourdieu’s critical sociology , for its part, suggests the need to problematise the politics underpinning the children’s rights project and our own engagement with it.

However, this chapter also leaves many questions unanswered, starting with the very possibility of combining coherently, within the same research endeavour, the critical and pragmatic postures of French sociology. Boltanski himself, despite arguing for unifying these approaches, admits that he does ‘not know whether this attempt at unification can actually hold out theoretically’ (cited in Basaure, 2011, p. 374). Yet the fecundity of the analytical insights of each sociology, combined with the possibility to create a productive tension between them, makes the enterprise worth pursuing. A reasoned, pragmatic and pluralist stance towards theorising also calls for expanding the theoretical toolbox of the children’s rights sociologist beyond the resources mobilised in this chapter, including by crossing disciplinary boundaries. After all, as Foucault contends (1984, p. 45), a truly critical stance may be conceived ‘as a limit-attitude’, a posture which ‘consists of analysing and reflecting upon limits’, including the limits imposed by our own trajectories, ethos, disciplines and pet theories .