Global Childhoods in International Perspective gathers a wide spectrum of contributors from Europe, the U.S., South Asia, South Africa and Latin America, who, attuned with present dilemmas in the area of childhood studies, discuss some key theoretical and empirical aspects of child scholarship, such as identity, child wellbeing, child mobility and migration, intergenerational relationships and child abuse. Through these expert contributions, the book explores the many ways in which the relationship between universality and particularities of childhood plays an important role in describing global childhoods. The book highlights childhood as a cross-cutting issue in global sociology with chapters on globalization and schooling in Burkina Faso, child abuse and neglect in India, identity and integration among children of African immigrants in France, social class mobility of Filipino migrant children in Italy and France, and an investigation into Kyrgyz childhoods. Ideal reading for researchers, practitioners and students interested in both childhood studies and the other areas including community research, sociology of education, social stratification, and the sociology of migration.

Global Childhoods in International Perspective gathers a wide spectrum of contributors from Europe, the U.S., South Asia, South Africa and Latin America, who, attuned with present dilemmas in the area of childhood studies, discuss some key theoretical and empirical aspects of child scholarship, such as identity, child wellbeing, child mobility and migration, intergenerational relationships and child abuse. Through these expert contributions, the book explores the many ways in which the relationship between universality and particularities of childhood plays an important role in describing global childhoods. The book highlights childhood as a cross-cutting issue in global sociology with chapters on globalization and schooling in Burkina Faso, child abuse and neglect in India, identity and integration among children of African immigrants in France, social class mobility of Filipino migrant children in Italy and France, and an investigation into Kyrgyz childhoods. Ideal reading for researchers, practitioners and students interested in both childhood studies and the other areas including community research, sociology of education, social stratification, and the sociology of migration.

This popular book provides a compelling introduction to thinking about childhood in rigorous and critical ways. Karen Wells offers a unique global perspective on children’s lives, showing how the notion of childhood varies widely and is continuously being radically re-shaped. Taking children seriously as active participants in society, the book explores key social issues such as how children are constituted as raced, classed and gendered subjects; how school and work operate as sites for the governing of childhood; and how children both shape and are shaped by politics, culture and the economy. Taking an engaging historical and comparative approach, the book discusses wide-ranging topics including children’s rights, the family, play, labour, migration and trafficking. In addition to updated literature throughout, this revised third edition includes extensive new material on children’s activism, politics and war, and a whole new chapter on juvenile justice. The book will continue to be of great value to students and scholars in the fields of sociology, geography, social policy and development studies. It will also be a valuable companion to practitioners whose work involves or impacts children, as well as to anyone interested in childhood in the contemporary world.

Children in the Global South continue to be affected by social disadvantage in our unequal post-colonial world order. With a focus on working-class children in Latin America, this book explores the challenges of promoting children’s rights in a context of decolonization. Liebel and colleagues give insights into the political lives of children and demonstrate ways in which the concept of children’s rights can be made meaningful at the grassroots level. Looking to the future, they consider how collaborative research with children can counteract their marginalization and oppression in society.

The Routledge Handbook of Childhood Studies and Global Development explores how global development agendas and processes of economic development influence children’s lives. It demonstrates that children are not only the frequent targets or objects of development but that they also shape and influence processes of economic, political and sociocultural development. The handbook makes the case for the importance of placing children at the heart of development debates and demonstrates how researchers, policymakers and practitioners can engage children in development. Through reports on field research as well as a critical engagement with theories in development studies and childhood studies, contributors contest normative assumptions about childhood and global development. They tease out and tease apart the complex social, historical, cultural, economic, epidemiological, ecological, geopolitical, and institutional processes transforming what it means to be young in the world today. Showcasing research from both established scholars and early career researchers, and with particular prominence given to the work of authors from the global south, this book will be an essential reference for policymakers, practitioners, and for researchers and students across childhood studies, education, geography, sociology, and global development.

This book analyzes children's agency as interactional achievement in formal and informal contexts of education and illuminates how agency can be encouraged and supported in these educational contexts. Taking a sociological approach, the author deals with children as social agents rather than learners and considers structures of interaction which encourage and support agency, rather than teaching. The book draws from field research conducted over more than twenty years in a variety of Italian and international contexts. This book is unique in providing a theoretical reflection on the social structures that can support children’s agency, as well as a large amount of examples which show how these structures and agency work.

The ebook edition of this title is Open Access and freely available to read online. Revising established research, this handbook equips readers with an understanding of the complex interplay between local and global and public and private contexts in the development of young people in Asian countries.