An interview with the editors of Critical Children’s Rights Studies: A Research Companion
Our members, Dr. Valeria Llobet (Universidad Nacional de San Martín, Argentina), Dr. Didier Reynaert (HOGENT University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Belgium), Dr. Afua Twum-Danso Imoh (University of Bristol, UK), and Prof. Wouter Vandenhole (University of Antwerp, Belgium), talk about their edited collection, Critical Children’s Rights Studies: A Research Companion (Routledge, 2025).
Q: What is this edited collection about?
This volume seeks to further develop the ‘critical turn’ in Children’s Rights Studies towards ‘Critical Children’s Rights Studies’, a process which has long been in evolution, with contributions from numerous scholars from diverse disciplines (Balgopalan, 2002; 2013; 2014; Abebe, 2009; Reynaert, 2012; Vandenhole, 2012; Liebel, 2012; Hanson and Nieuwenhuys; 2013; Twum-Danso Imoh, 2009; 2013). This Research companion seeks to build on this foundation by developing the conceptual argument around what it means to be critical as a critical children's rights scholar. It does this by bringing together a rich collection of papers which all, in their respective ways, seek to address the following themes:
1. Critical’ as deconstructing ‘obvious’ beliefs - Critical children’s rights studies should engage in an on-going exercise of questioning ‘truths’ and dominant assumptions, norms and values that shape children’s rights regimes.
2. ‘Critical’ as constructing alternative pathways - The constructing feature of a critical perspective is concerned with transforming children’s rights along alternative normative lines, and thereby creating new normative discourses and regimes that overcome existing exclusions and inequalities of children.
3. ‘Critical’ as embracing situatedness - A situated approach of children’s rights takes the variety of contexts in which children grow up into account. This means that constructive and deconstructive processes of children’s rights might be very different, depending on very different situations.
4. ‘Critical’ as examining our own positionality - How a researcher relates to the subject of children’s rights must be subject to continuous reflection including on key variables such as geographical background and personal and professional histories.
5. ‘Critical’ as expressing critique to the critical perspective - In line with the idea that every new construction of children’s rights needs to subject itself to a deconstruction exercise, we seek to continually reflect on the limitations of the critical perspective of children’s rights.
Q: What made you initiate this volume?
This volume emerged as a by-product of an earlier volume, The Routledge International Handbook of Children's Rights Studies (Vandenhole et al., 2015), in which the editors, two of whom were involved in this new volume, outlined elements of an emerging field of Critical Children’s Rights Studies. In doing so, they sought to set the preliminary scene of a scientific development that was already evident before the publication of the handbook as mentioned above in qu.1. When invited by the publisher to prepare a second edition, two of the previous editors were no longer available for such a project. The two remaining editors, therefore, looked for new colleagues to join, and collectively, this reconfigured group redefined the objective of the publication, with a specific focus around deepening the meaning and contours of Critical Children’s Rights Studies.
Crucially, it is important to underscore that the collaborative nature of this process did not just involve the editors of this new volume; instead, through a series of online seminars, undertaken in 2023, which involved various academics from different disciplines and geographical contexts, the key themes that framed the core argument of this volume, were identified.
An excerpt from the introductory chapter:
Already from the very first echoes of Children’s Rights Studies at the beginning of the 2010s, there were voices advocating for ‘Critical Children's Rights Studies’ (see, for example, Reynaert et al., 2012; Desmet et al., 2015). However, labelling one’s own field with the concept ‘critical’ is not without commitment. This is to connect with a longer tradition in social science of critical thinking, which goes back to the critical theory of the ‘Frankfurter Schule’ and which has been developed in several variants up to the present day (see, for example, Celikates & Flynn, 2023; Rensmann, 2017). What these variants have in common is the understanding of their object of study (in our case children’s rights) in critical relation with the existing social order - an order in which the researcher is engaged by questioning it for its role in serving particular interests. Social institutions and practices such as child-rearing and education, welfare and labour are seen, from the perspective of the critical approach, as initiating and socializing individuals into the existing social and political order, without questioning this order in itself. As a result, by definition, the interests of those in power are served. The fact that this social order can also foster exclusion, inequality, injustice or even oppression and exploitation is a central claim in the critical school of thinking. Critical approaches, however, strive not only to portray dynamics of exclusion and inequality through their research, but equally to bring about societal change towards greater equality and inclusion. Herein lies the emancipatory nature of the critical approach.
Therefore, the move towards a critical variant in Children’s Rights Studies is not unique. The fields of study to which Children’s Rights Studies is related such as Childhood Studies, Human Rights Studies, Women's Studies, Race Studies, Queer Studies, Disability Studies all witnessed a critical turn in recent decades. This was prompted by the observation that various categories and groups in society such as children, women, people from the LGBTQIA+ community, Black people, etc. persistently experience inequality due to exclusionary mechanisms whose root causes are inherently linked to the structures upon which society is organized. In the field of Critical Disability Studies, for example, the critical variant emerged from a critique of the normalization paradigm of persons with disabilities (Meekosha & Shuttleworth, 2009). Critical Race Studies, focuses, among other things, on the structural mechanisms of discrimination embedded in social institutions (Teviño et al., 2008). And Critical Childhood Studies also explicitly focuses on real external environments within which children grow up. As Alanen (2011, p.150) states:
Critical Childhood Studies implies being critical not only of our own research practices but the very practices and social arrangements that we study in the ‘real’ world of children and childhood. Thus, making explicit the normative foundations of childhood research requires that we also address a number of normative issues concerning the practices and arrangements ‘out there’, and specify in what particular respects and for what specific reasons they are problematic. It also asks us to specify what constitutes a good, or at least a better life for children and for human beings in general (see also Tisdall et al., 2023).
Building on Alanen's understanding of what ‘critical’ entails, we can essentially distinguish Critical Children’s Rights Studies from Children’s Rights Studies at the point at which they position children’s rights in relation to the broader societal conditions. Critical CRS analyzes children’s rights from the viewpoint of what these conditions consist of, whether these conditions contribute to a greater respect for children and on what normative grounds we can justify this respect. In other words, questioning the social conditions themselves is the fundamental stake in a critical approach. Here, unlike CRS, Critical CRS does not necessarily adhere to the normative horizon of the UNCRC. After all, the UNCRC too can be an instrument for the perpetuation of the existing order and thereby serves as a tool that reinforces inequality. In this sense, the normative scope of Critical CRS goes beyond the UNCRC and seeks grounds for justification of children's rights in alternative epistemic schemes.
These general, rather abstract, premises lead to three central focal points in our conceptualization of Critical Children’s Rights Studies: i) the normative turn; ii) an orientation to equality and iii) a focus on epistemic injustice. In doing so, we join the rich tradition of critical theory but, at the same time, Critical Children’s Rights Studies seeks to deepen and complement the various strands of Children's Rights Studies that have outlined above.