Abstract
Until very recently discussion of mobilization paid limited attention to children as a specific element of fighting forces. On occasions that the involvement of the young in armed conflict and political violence was noted it has conventionally been in the form of descriptions of individual cases. These have generally contained little indication that such involvement constituted a distinct, let alone problematic, phenomenon that required explanation. The detailed account of the thousands of British lads who fought during the First World War (Van Emden 2005) and various studies of the many young people involved in the anti-Apartheid struggle in the 1970s and 1980s (Reynolds 1995; Thomas 1990) are two examples of this genre of writing, principally produced by historians and anthropologists.
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Hart, J. (2012). The Mobilization of Children: What’s the Difference?. In: Guichaoua, Y. (eds) Understanding Collective Political Violence. Conflict, Inequality and Ethnicity. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230348318_4
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