Abstract
Recent developments within the discussion on children’s rights and in the new sociology of childhood come with a strong focus on children’s agency. They stress their status as a social and political actor, emphasise the need to view children as “beings” rather than “becomings” and highlight children’s autonomy and individuality. This chapter argues that the recent “theoretical orthodoxy” of children’s autonomy may purport an overly optimistic view on children’s agency and neglects inequalities within the space of childhood and youth. It describes the capability approach as a more appropriate approach for analysing inequalities within the space of youth and childhood. It overcomes some of the blind spots described. Particularly, it suggests that the capability approach provides an adequate link between prescriptive treaties (like the UNCRC) and descriptive-analytic approaches (like the sociology of childhood and youth). Based on a research project on transitions from school to work, the article reviews the role of welfare State institutions for the construction of children as social policy objects and for their access to citizenship rights, and analyses differences within the experience of youth that can easily be overlooked by a strong focus on children’s agency. The capability approach is used to develop a tentative framework for a situated assessment of children’s and youth lives. The chapter shortly reviews possible venues of childhood and youth research inspired by the capability approach.
This work was supported by the Marie-Curie actions of the European Commission, Framework program 7, Initial training network “education as welfare” (EduWel).
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Notes
- 1.
Neets is an abbreviation for not in employment, education or training, a policy category which plays a central role within the European strategies against youth unemployment.
- 2.
Sen, as well as Nussbaum are ambiguous about the possibility to the use of capabilities as an evaluative framework for Children: “since children are not mature enough to make decisions for themselves” (Saito 2003: 25), Sen proposes to focus instead on functionings, and to” (…) not only consider “the child’s freedom now, but also the freedom in the future” (ibid., emphasis added). Similarly, Nussbaum argues that “Education is one area in which the usual deference to choice is relaxed: governments will be well advised to require functioning of children, not simply capability” (2011: 156). I argue that despite this partial (and appropriate) restrictions, Sen’s claims on “positionality”, “exclusionary neglect” and the importance of taking into account “real lives” in the evaluation of justice are equally applicable to children (see for a more thorough discussion on the “choice” issue and the application of capabilities as a evaluative framework for children: Clark and Eisenhuth 2011; Ballet et al. 2011).
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Dahmen, S. (2014). The Theoretical Orthodoxy of Children’s and Youth Agency and Its Contradictions: Moving from Normative Thresholds to a Situated Assessment of Children’s and Youth Lives. In: Stoecklin, D., Bonvin, JM. (eds) Children’s Rights and the Capability Approach. Children’s Well-Being: Indicators and Research, vol 8. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9091-8_8
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