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Political Participation of Children and Adolescents in Brazil: An Identity Study Based on the Narratives of Adolescent Activists

Thalita Catarina Decome Poker (Centro Universitário Salesiano de São Paulo, Brazil)

The Social Construction of Adolescence in Contemporaneity

ISBN: 978-1-80117-449-7, eISBN: 978-1-80117-448-0

Publication date: 31 July 2023

Abstract

Background: The political participation of children and adolescents provided for in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and Brazil’s Statute of the Child and Adolescent adopted in July 1990 has been proposed to ensure the effectiveness and guarantee of citizenship with regard to children and adolescents in adult-centered and adult-normative cultures.

Methods: This study aimed to understand the meaning of recognition in relation to the child as a subject of rights in the context of political participation in Brazil from 2001 to 2017 through the accounts of two adolescents who have been activists since childhood. The narratives were interpreted in light of the identity theory based on the critical social psychology and the sociology of childhood.

Results: This helped identify (1) the systemic unpreparedness when dealing with adolescents as persons who advocate for the civil rights of children and adolescents; (2) the attempts by education professionals to restrict adolescent activists to schools and family institutions to delegitimize them from their representative potential; and (3) that political participation could help raise the interviewed adolescents’ awareness of the power relations inherent in the social structure.

Conclusions: The effectiveness of political participation is considered a challenge, regardless of official documents being made use of, given the need for a paradigm shift with regard to the universalist theories that consider the institution of childhood exclusively as a progressive preparation for the adult world.

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Acknowledgements

Acknowledgments

These writings are the sum of the contributions that enabled and made this possible. Acknowledgments are given to the National Center for Scientific and Technological Development for funding this research; to the members of the Sociology of Childhood and Early Childhood Education Research Group from the School of Education at USP who participated in the exchanges and comments made at different times in this research.

Citation

Poker, T.C.D. (2023), "Political Participation of Children and Adolescents in Brazil: An Identity Study Based on the Narratives of Adolescent Activists", Isidório, M.S. and Bass, L.E. (Ed.) The Social Construction of Adolescence in Contemporaneity (Sociological Studies of Children and Youth, Vol. 31), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 31-49. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1537-466120230000031004

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

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