Examining children's rights and citizenship in the child protection system

Los derechos de participación de los niños y de las niñas y su ciudadanía se han erigido como un elemento central en los discursos y políticas para los derechos de la infancia. No obstante, con menor frecuencia se advierten dichos debates aplicados a los contextos de cuidados y protección, pese a que estos se han articulado históricamente desde la idea de ciudadanía. La presente investigación examina los derechos de participación y ciudadanía de los niños y las niñas en el marco de la protección a la infancia, siguiendo el caso de estudio del sistema madrileño de protección. Para ello, se lleva a cabo una investigación cualitativa que incorpora un análisis de las representaciones políticas de los niños y de las niñas desamparados y protegidos por las administraciones y, al mismo tiempo, las significaciones que profesionales y niños protegidos otorgan al proceso de la protección en sus vidas cotidianas. Se puede concluir que, tanto en las políticas españolas para la infancia, principalmente de protección, como en el imaginario profesional, los niños y las niñas protegidos son representados negativamente en base a su incapacidad e irresponsabilidad; lo cual conlleva la no garantización de sus derechos de participación. Por el contrario, los niños y adolescentes protegidos manifiestan estrategias de autonomía y reclaman espacios donde relacionarse de forma igualitaria con profesionales y otros niños protegidos. Como consecuencia, a nivel institucional, el sistema de protección de la infancia suele funcionar como una estructura invisibilizadora y contenedora de los conflictos derivados de la relación entre profesionales, familias y niños protegidos, menoscabando en situaciones el objetivo de la protección.Children’s participation rights and citizenship have emerged as central topic in the realm of children’s rights discourses and policies. However, such debates are applied to care and protection context less frequently, although these debates have been historically articulated from the idea of citizenship. This research examines children’s rights and citizenship in the frame of the child protection system through the case of Spain and, more specifically, this one of the Madrilenian child protection system. In order to do that, this research applies a qualitative method, analysing representations about how children, who are looked after by public authorities, are portrayed in to the political imaginary and discourses as well as how everyday meanings are given to the protection process by professionals and protected children. It can be concluded that both the Spanish policies of childhood, mainly protection ones, and the professional imaginary symbolize negatively protected children arguing on the base of their incompetence and their irresponsibility; therefore children participation rights are not being guaranteed by these discourses and practices. By contrast, children and young people show their search for autonomy and they claim for spaces to establish equal relationships with professionals and other children in homes. As a result, child protection system often works as an invisibilized context that contains relationships between professionals, families and children characterized by conflicts. This, many times, undermines the protection aim.Depto. de Trabajo Social y Servicios SocialesFac. de Trabajo SocialTRUEUniversidad de Murciapu

Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements