Childhood

What conceptualisations of the child might explain the communicative and rhetorical significance of their selection as targets in acts of terror? It is argued that the child as an embodiment of modernity’s enthralment to the future’s promises of progress or redemption puts them on this front line. As an alternative to modernity’s futurism, Surrealism presents us with a conceptualisation of the child that anticipates contemporary ideas of ‘queerness’. The recognition of the child’s transgressive attitude to the credo of modernity can be a way of resisting increasingly instrumentalised ways of thinking about children.

Research into child poverty and juvenile delinquency shares two features: both involve children and sensitive topics. This article focuses on the critical problem of the quality of children’s participation in research. Some of the ethical and methodological challenges faced in two research projects, a self-report survey on juvenile delinquency and a multi-method study of low-income families, will be discussed. The construct of engagement is proposed as a rationale to address these challenges.

This article explores the cultural, youthful, and embodied acts of subject-making of South Asian immigrant teens growing up in a post 9/11 New York City, wherein they experience Islamophobia in their neighborhoods and schools. I argue that these acts of subject-making, situated in particular sociopolitical contexts, and made evident in multiple in-between sites of an after-school center, street corners, and online forums, can be read as performative politics of youth, and offer insights into the political agency of young people.

This article explores how pedagogues assess and categorize children’s well-being in the everyday life of a kindergarten caring for a large number of children considered socially vulnerable. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, the article focuses on a newly implemented well-being assessment tool oriented towards making all children’s needs visible through the pedagogues’ regular colour-categorizations of their state of well-being. The article problematizes this ambition and proposes that some children are rendered invisible in the process of categorizing. It is argued that the categorizations are more reflective of the structural conditions of the kindergarten and a gauged sense of urgency.

This article examines expressions of difference and sameness and peer relations among children (aged 5–7) in school. The article concludes that children do not generally relate sameness or difference to their peer relations or to ethnicity or gender. Furthermore, the article demonstrates that the school setting plays a crucial role for children’s peer interactions: The purpose of school activities directs children’s expressions of difference and sameness, and the structures for peer interaction enable some relations and restrict others.

School holidays can be stressful periods for children from low-income families. Poor provision of appropriate childcare, limited access to enrichment activities, and food insecurity mean that children’s health and well-being can suffer and their learning stagnate or decline. This article examines and documents the evidence that has emerged on this topic and aims to raise its profile and the impact on children’s lives. It makes the case for further academic scrutiny of this unexamined and neglected subject.

In our study of Czech homeschooling families, we discovered that the unifying theme of their justifying narratives was how the families rearranged the norm of “good parenting,” defined as the amount of time families spent together. The parents argued the importance of sacrificing their own time and educating their children themselves. They distinguished themselves from parents who are not willing to attend the children’s needs as much. Finally, we show that homeschooled children also actively adopt the family time management.

The Queensland Reformatory and Industrial Schools Act (1865) provided for the creation of a system of reformatory and industrial schools. This article explores the early years of the reformatory for boys. The Act defined Aboriginal children as ‘neglected’ and eligible to be sent to this institution. However, of the first 1000 children admitted, all but 33 were White. This article explores this contradiction through an analysis of the reformatory in light of fears about the fragility of Whiteness in Queensland’s climate.