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In Brazil, Afro‐descendant children continue to be stigmatised and excluded due to race‐based discriminatory practices and attitudes inherited from colonial times. In order to challenge racism, Brazilian child activists (aged 13–17) instigated a movement encouraging children to wear Afro‐style hair as a symbol of contestation and liberation and to reject hair straightening as a form of domination. Based on empirical qualitative research conducted in the Brazilian cities of Rio de Janeiro, Recife and Fortaleza, this article discusses the intersection between children's participation and activism, and the use of Afro‐style hair as a tool of identity activism to restore the right to non‐discrimination on any grounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children's right to participate has been one of the most challenging rights to implement due to dominant norms which position children under adults' authority. Notably, this has more negatively impacted girls than boys due to traditional gender norms and practices that often restrict girls' agency and are reproduced and unchallenged in many societies. To contest these struggles, young female activists (13–17 years) in Sierra Leone, who are the focus of this paper, engaged in direct actions to influence public decision‐making and prevent girls from being married during childhood. Drawing upon empirical evidence exploring the girls' activism experiences, this article explore, young female activists' practical work is an example of what intersectionality as praxis means by connecting social categories to inequalities and highlights that they saw themselves as social actors with the ability to negotiate power, take part in community‐based activism to end child marriage and network with others to seek justice for practices and attitudes they perceived to be abusive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children's participation has significantly increased in the last three decades; however, participation rights, as outlined in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, are often undermined by a range of dominant identities and traditional social constructions. As children's participation processes are immersed in complex environments and multifaceted social identities, this article examines the experiences of marginalised children in Brazil and explores how identities enable or restrict their opportunities to realise their participation rights. By discussing the intersection between identities and inequalities, the paper revisits a model for child participation proposed by Laura Lundy and offers an expanded typology that includes three dimensions: 'intersecting identities', 'enabling environments' and 'dimension factors'. In doing so, the revised model seeks to address complex forms of exclusion and marginalisation which result from a range of intersecting social categories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children and young people are increasingly participating in events organised by international organisations. In spite of a growing body of research on children's participation in decision‐making, little is known about their experiences and the perceptions of adults who attend. This article compares the experiences of 16 children and 12 adults who participated in high‐level global events. Three themes were identified, Representation, Capacity and Impact. Findings suggest that while children and adults identified similar opportunities and challenges for meaningful participation, children's perceptions of their engagement differed from adults' in that they were more likely to be positive about the value of their contribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws on child activists' experiences in Bangladesh and Ghana, who mobilised to stop potential child marriages from their respective Child Forums and Children's Parliaments. Case studies were undertaken with 75 child activists, 10 girls whose child marriages had been stopped, and 22 adult stakeholders. The children's activism disrupted intergenerational relations – unsettling adults' attitudes towards children – and depended on such relations – children were successful in stopping child marriages because they drew on critical social capital and mobilised key stakeholders. Children's activism thus has lessons for children's participation literature more generally, in the synergies between children's mobilisation and intergenerational relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has spread to more than 200 countries and territories, despite governments' efforts to 'flatten the curve'. The measures to respond to the COVID-19 outbreak have been perceived as retrogressive for children and young people's rights to participation. A common denominator across countries and regions is the reduced spaces for children and young people to influence decision-making processes and policy responses associated with COVID-19. This article critically examines the meanings and implications of children and young people's participation rights in the time of COVID-19. In particular, it explores how lockdowns and other physical distancing measures have a negative impact on social interactions, leaving behind hard-to-reach children and young people and undermining some children and young people's rights to participate on the premise that their protection is more relevant in crisis situations. This article discusses children and young people's perspectives on how their opportunities to be listened to during the pandemic have been restricted. The article considers children and young people's ability to communicate online, considering how those without access to the Internet – practically half the world – are left out, and, in the end, demonstrating that this pandemic is producing and exacerbating existing inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children and young people's participation in decision-making has substantially increased in the last 3 decades; although, their participation in research has been more problematic due to traditional views that exclude them from the realm of knowledge generation. This article critically reflects on the way that 12 children and young people engaged as co-researchers in an intergenerational research project that explored the perspectives of children and young people during the COVID-19 outbreak. Drawing upon the experiences of these child researchers, the author discusses the methodological and ethical complexities of their engagement—which is already a disputed topic—in the context of the global health crisis characterized by lockdowns, isolation, and social distancing. The author outlines the strategic role that the child researchers had in reaching their peers and collecting relevant data, which would not have been possible without them, due to the circumstances of the pandemic. Furthermore, it is argued the need to rethink the role of children and young people as partners in research, especially in times of crises, and to embrace the epistemological position that they are able to deliver quality research results. The generation of collective knowledge is intertwined with relations, situations, and contexts, and together they influence each other, making the research project dynamic and unconceivable without the child researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The 'shadow of the law' helped child activists mobilise legal officials to intervene in potential child marriages. • Child activism was not an isolated, individualistic activity; it relied on relationships having already been established. • Child activists were successful because they had the expertise to access conclusive administrative information to persuade powerful adults to act. • Child activists were willing and able to act urgently, taking the initiative to find such information and bring it to the attention of local officials. • Child activism should become a conceptual and practical challenge to the children's participation field, learning from the associated field of youth activism. There is ever-increasing global and local attention to children's participation rights. As activities have proliferated, so have concerns about children's participation having an impact on decision-making. This article looks to what can be learned conceptually and practically from children's activism, where children have actively changed decisions in their communities. This article examines one such example, where groups of children in Bangladesh stopped the illegal marriages of children. Research was undertake with two Child Forums, involving 36 child activists. Further interviews were undertaken with girls whose marriages had been stopped and adults who had key roles in the child activism, such as local police officers and civil servants. The analysis finds that: (1) the legal context was critical to the child activists' success, not because parents were arrested but because children could mobilise local officials; (2) the activism was collective rather than individual, supported by a nexus of relationships; (3) successes depended on children's persistent and urgent activity, in order to mobilise other people's attention and actions. The article concludes that the children's participation field should attend to the conceptual lessons from activism and its practical contributions in: recognising the critical importance of the 'shadow of the law'; building children's political capital, and supporting the spaces and time for children to mobilise alongside educational demands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last twenty years, childhood studies has challenged the schooled and developmental models of childhood. The children's rights agenda has combined with academic childhood studies, to emphasise that children are and can be social actors and to seek ways to recognise and support their participation rights. For those who promote the participation of children and young people, there is considerable enthusiasm to involve them in all research stages—from research planning, fieldwork, and analysis to dissemination, leading to growth in what is often called 'child-led research'. This article draws upon an empirical study of 'child-led research' projects, undertaken in Bangladesh, Jordan and Lebanon, for a critical examination of the meanings and implications of 'child-led research'. In particular, this paper explores what counts as knowledge in social science research within contexts of generational difference and power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]