Children as citizens

In this section we will examine citizenship, which is often understood as the formal participation in the political life of a society by a person who is legally recognised as a member of that society. However, the term citizen can also mean someone who simply inhabits a particular town, city or country. Taking this broader definition of citizens as those who are members of a society, children act as citizens. But children are rarely positioned as ‘citizens' and it is likely that there are many barriers to their being viewed as full citizens on a par with adults. For example, having the right to vote counts as one mark of citizenship. If one examines the history of women’s suffrage, one can see that it took a very long time for it to be seen as acceptable for women to vote. Women won full suffrage in the USA less than 100 years ago, in 1920, and in the UK in 1928. In Greece, for example, this did not happen until 1952 and not until 1961 in Paraguay. There is a small number of countries, such as Saudi Arabia, where women still do not have voting rights equal to those of men. A global consensus still exists about children being excluded from voting rights. The age at which citizens can vote in national elections is typically 18, with a small number of countries, such as Austria and Brazil, permitting 16-year-olds to vote and a smaller number of countries, such as Lebanon and Cameroon, sticking to 21. Thus, judging by this key marker of citizenship, children are not citizens.

If, on the other hand, a citizen is one who contributes to society, children act as citizens in many ways, often unrecognised. One way children contribute is through their labour. This is a particularly vexed issue and not helped by disagreement about what exactly qualifies as ‘labour’ or ‘work’. Sometimes the argument is made that labour is unpaid and work is paid, but the distinction is somewhat arbitrary.

In the minority world children have been increasingly excluded from the formal worker role to make more room in their lives for education and play. As Nieuwenhuys notes: ‘The prohibition of child labour became a major post staking out the project of modern childhood’ (2009, p. 289). Laws have been introduced in most economically developed states that ban the paid employment of young children and carefully restrict and set out the conditions of work for teenagers. However, in other parts of the world child workers are a fact of life and the income children bring in is often essential for the survival of the family. UNICEF statistics suggest that worldwide 150 million children aged 5 to 14 years are engaged in child labour (2009). The organisation recognises the problems in defining child labour, which continue to prevent the collection of accurate statistics. However, UNICEF estimates that in sub-Saharan countries one in four children aged 5-17 years ‘are engaged in labour that is considered detrimental to their health and development’ (UNICEF, 2018). While nobody would argue that children should be exploited and abused as workers, many have questioned the imposition by some Western activists and by advocates for the UNCRC of the view that child labour is antithetical to child well-being. Children may well experience a strong sense of agency in working and being valued as contributors to the family’s economic welfare.

In an ethnographic study of Mayan children living on the Yucatan peninsula, Gaskins (1999) describes how the children learn that adult work is a priority in their culture. From as young as 18 months old children help adults and take pride in doing so. Play is tolerated but parents do not get involved in or support play activities. Work always takes precedence and children cheerfully leave their play to perform chores. Gaskins notes that 'by the time children are five years old it is not unusual to see them do some chores spontaneously and take responsibility for tasks beyond those assigned to them' (p. 53). The Mayan children show a wider range of competence in tending crops, minding livestock and taking care of younger children than the average minority world child would exhibit at their age. There is an expectation in their culture that children are competent, responsible and take initiative and there is little evidence of questioning or resistance on the part of the children to their culturally inscribed roles. Thus their agency is expressed through their willing engagement and enjoyment of being competent and making a contribution.

Nieuwenhuys discusses working children’s movements, which ‘see their members as active participants in their social world and want their right to work in dignity’ (2009, p. 295). She describes three organisations of working children, one each from India, Africa and South America. While different, they all advocate for better conditions for working children and a recognition of their need to work and desire to work. Ironically the international campaigns against child labour and their own governments’ attempts to comply with the demands of the ILO (International Labour Organisation) and other global organisations can end up damaging these children’s lives rather than helping them. Nieuwenhuys concludes that, ‘the world over, children work to support their families and need to be recognised and respected for their economic contribution’ (p. 298).

Schneider notes that, ‘in all cultures, children display an apparently inherent motivation to become competent and to construct knowledge about themselves and about social interactions’ (1993, p. 72). In minority world cultures this urge to competence is present in children but directed -by adults - towards school achievement, sport and social interactions rather than work that assists adults or involves payment. Qvortrup (2001) points out that children in the minority world do most of their ‘work’ in school. While not contributing immediately to the family economy there is often the expectation that children will, once grown up, use their education to help the family, or society at large. However, the extent to which minority world children carry out work that contributes immediately to the family’s income or well-being is considerably underestimated. Children work in family businesses such as shops and pubs and on farms; they work as carers, looking after younger children or parents or grandparents. It is estimated that in the UK there are approximately 244,000 children who are caring for family members. Understandably this is seen as a child protection issue and the Children's Society Chief Executive commented as follows in 2013:

Caring can cost children dearly.. .young carers are missing out on their childhoods and school, gaining fewer qualifications and job opportunities and therefore are less likely to earn a decent living in the future. All children must be allowed to thrive and enjoy their childhoods.

While respecting the view that children should not be overwhelmed by caring roles and should not be undertaking work they hate doing, this perspective seems be emblematic of a view of childhood as a time of irresponsibility and dependence. Children themselves often report positive feelings about their experience as carers: it can make them feel valued, needed and effective. In the Children's Society campaign to highlight the hidden problem of child carers it was striking that some of the well-known people they asked to campaign for them felt empowered by their experience as family carers. For example, Jo Whiley, DJ and broadcaster, said in 2015:

When you’re really young it makes you grow up very quickly and I think it informs the person you are. And you will instinctively be more intuitive, you’ll be more aware, you’ll be more caring and you’ll be more aware of other people and that’s a great thing - that makes you a strong person, a really special person.

And Jade Ewen, singer and actress, said: 'Being a young carer has more positives than negatives for me in my life. It made me stronger than I realise. I can get the job done’ (www. childrenssociety.org,uk/what-we-do/helping-children/young-carers). De Coninck-Smith and colleagues (1997) have argued that the idea that work is not part of childhood has created a blind spot and that the history of child labour is, in a way, ‘the history of the adult world’s reluctance to accept children as social and cultural agents’ (p. 9).

The dominant modes of representation of children and childhood typically preclude the idea of children as having full voting rights or the right to work, or even the competences needed to work. These issues are fraught with difficulties. Such difficulties serve to perpetuate the double-speak around children’s rights and participation and the ambivalent adult perspective on children’s expression of their agency. When one examines the ways in which many children suffer through poverty, sexual and physical abuse, starvation and exploitation, they still form an oppressed minority without the rights due to a citizen - or a human person. Children cannot access the freedoms and resources they need without the goodwill of adults. Here we see the limits of their agency. Even in rich countries, levels of child poverty are increasing (Bradshaw, 2011; UNICEF, 2018). The UK Institute of Fiscal Studies reported in March 2018 (www.ifs.org.uk/uploads/R145%20 for20web.pdf, accessed 8 March 2019) that benefit cuts, service cuts and other policy decisions will see child poverty hitting a record 37% by 2022, reversing any progress made in the previous two decades. This speaks to adult disregard for children's dignity and well-being and children’s own powerlessness.