Children, Childhoods and Global Politics

"Extending and enriching our understanding of how children and childhoods are always already imbricated in the practices of global politics, the various essays in this impressive and diverse volume demonstrate the significance of children as subjects of political discourse and intervention, and agents of political change. The collection is both coherent and wide-ranging, articulating clearly not only why children and childhoods matter in global politics but also how these political actors and processes can be – indeed, are – pivotal to the constitution of global-local connections and to the reproduction of, or resistance to, existing structures of power." Laura J. Shepherd, The University of Sydney

“This groundbreaking volume demonstrates in brilliant and wide-ranging detail why studies of children and childhoods are not just peripheral but essential for understanding the realities and possibilities of global politics.” John Wall, Rutgers University

"An overdue text - pushes the boundaries of existing research on the construction and operationalising of childhoods and the specificity of children and youth within multiple sites of power." Helen Brocklehurst, University of Derby

J. Marshall Beier is Professor in the Department of Political Science at McMaster University.

Helen Berents is Senior Lecturer in International Relations at Griffith University.

Introduction: Children and Childhoods in Global Political Perspective - J. Marshall Beier and Helen Berents

Part 1: Imagined Childhoods

1. ‘Anchor Babies’ and ‘Imposter Children’: Childhoods’ Representations in Global Migration Politics - Patrícia Nabuco Martuscelli

2. Creating Inclusive Reconciliation and Reporting Spaces with Children: Valuing Their Stories - Caitlin Mollica

3. Stories about Children Born of Violence: Counternarratives in the Peruvian Truth Commission’s Archive and Popular Culture - Ana Lucia Alonso Soriano

4. (Un)Recognition of Child Soldiers’ Agency in UN Peacekeeping Practice - Dustin Johnson

Part 2: Governed Childhoods

5. Contested Children’s and Young People’s Political Representation in Global Health - Anna Holzscheiter and Laura Pantzerhielm

6. The Representative Breakthrough? Children and Youth Representation in the Global Governance of Migration - Jonathan Josefsson

7. The Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict: A Normative Agenda and Children’s Agency in Armed Conflict - Vanessa Bramwell

8. In/visible Subjects: Global Migration Management and the Integration of Refugee Children into Schools in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia - Alebachew K. Haybano and Jennifer Riggan

9. Alone and on the Move: Unaccompanied Children in UK Parliamentary Debates 2015–2016 - Lesley Pruitt and Antje Missbach

10. Pathologies of Child Governance: Safe Harbor Laws and Children Involved in the Sex Trade in the United States - Robyn Linde

Part 3: Lived Childhoods

11. Childhood, Playing War, and Militarism: Beyond Discourses of Domination/ Resistance and Towards an Ethics of Encounter - Sean Carter and Tara Woodyer

12. Troubling Girl Power Environmentalism: Indigenous Girls, Climate Change Activism, and a Relational Ethic of Responsibility - Lindsay Robinson

13. Children’s Intifada: Children as Participants in a Violent Conflict - Timea Spitka

14. Children’s Agency and Co-construction of Everyday Militarism(s): Representations and Realities of War in Ukrainian Children’s Art, 2014–2022 - Kristina Hook and Iuliia Hoban

15. Centring the Demand for Critical Climate Justice Education - Bennett Collins and Ali Watson