21st Kilbrandon Lecture

It is more than 25 years since publication of ‘Childhood’ in ‘Crisis,’? (Scraton, 1997), a collection of essays written by members of the Young People, Power and Justice Research Group, formed following the killing of James Bulger in Liverpool. The trial in an adult court of two 10-year-old children, convicted of murder and publicly named, created an unprecedented and vitriolic reaction in the media and from politicians of all parties. The text mapped the negative impact on legislation, state policies and professional practice. In the wake of moral panics regarding escalating crime, ‘no-go’ areas and a rising ‘underclass’, a rare case was portrayed as the extreme end of a continuum of children’s aberrant behaviour and parental neglect. Derived in recent research and activism in the North of Ireland, this lecture adopts a critical analysis to critique the continued regulation and criminalisation of children and young people, particularly those defined ‘troublesome’. It challenges their persistent marginalisation and denial of meaningful participation. It calls for policies and practices which: contest negative assumptions and stereotypes; address socio-economic inequalities; prioritise the lived experiences and views of children and young people; and create hope through opportunity

Infância, exclusão social e educação como utopia realizável

A infância, como construção social, tem sofrido, no decurso da 2ª modernidade, processos de reinstitucionalização que, em larga medida, põem em causa as representações e imagens das crianças, dominantes nos últimos 200 anos. A análise da (re)construção das identidades sociais e das subjectividades infantis constitui, desse modo, uma tarefa teórica da mais exigente actualidade. O que, entretanto, aqui se assinala é que este processo de reinstitucionalização da infância, apesar da construção de consensos globais sobre os direitos das crianças, tem vindo a aumentar os factores e as condições de exclusão das gerações mais jovens face aos direitos sociais e da cidadania. Neste artigo inventariam-se alguns dos principais indicadores de exclusão, considerando diversos espaços estruturais, e assinalam-se alguns dos pontos de ruptura por onde pode passar a construção de uma educação escolar centrada na afirmação activa dos direitos das crianças.Along the second modernity, childhood, as a social construction, has undergone reinstatement processes that question the representations and images of children that have prevailed over last two hundred years. An analysis of the (re) construction of the social identities and childhood subjectivity thus constitute a theoretical task of the most contemporary exigence. Nevertheless, even though a global consensus about children’s rights has been constructed, the increase of factors and conditions that exclude the youngest generations from social rights and citizenship, induced by this reinstatement process of childhood, is here emphasized. This paper lists some of the main indicators of exclusion, considering different structural spaces, and pinpoints some turning points through which the construction of a school education centered on the active affirmation of the children’s rights could be attained.CIFPEC/CIEC - Centro de Investigação em Estudos da Criança, UM (UI 644 e 317 da FCT