The Active Child Citizen: Lessons from Canadian Policy and the Children’s Movement

ID:	HARP-300
Title:	The Active Child Citizen: Lessons from Canadian Policy and the Children’s Movement
Source:	Citizenship Studies, 2002, 6, 4, Dec, 507-538
Parties:
Dispute Resolution Organ:
Year:	2002
Pages:	0
Author(s):
Keywords:	Canada, child benefits, citizenship, court, decision making, human rights, law, tribunal, United Nations, Rights of the Child, family law, juvenile justice, neoliberal
Abstract:	The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child has advanced a model of active citizenry for children, which is difficult to reconcile with the still dominant Western notions of childhood that fetishize innocence & attribute passivity & incompetence to children. This article explores the manner in which state policy, Canadian courts, & children’s politics in Canada have responded to the imaginary of the active child citizen. The Canadian government has provided limited political space to young people & has narrowly construed children’s participation rights as limited to family law & juvenile justice. The reluctance of adult decision makers to open up policy making to the contributions of children has been further hindered by the current antidemocratic cast of neoliberal governance. This article examines how quasi-judicial tribunals & the Canadian courts have invoked the Convention in their dealings with child asylum seekers, only to construct childhood participation & childhood protection as mutually exclusive. The article concludes with a brief exploration of the alternative model of children’s citizenship revealed by the children’s movement organization, Free the Children. In contrast to the relative failure of adult decisionmakers to implement the participation rights of children, the contemporary children’s movement advances a view of children as empowered, knowledgeable, compassionate, & global citizens, who are nonetheless, like other marginalized groups, in need of special, group-differentiated protections. 62 References. Adapted from the source document.
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