"The book elegantly combines conceptual ideas with case studies on children and young people’s participation, drawn from Cuevas-Parra’s own practice as both a researcher and a children’s rights advocate working globally. The result is a book with fresh and challenging ideas, particularly in how to attend to power differences and inequalities, and the considerable potential of child activism and child-led research."
Kay Tisdall
, Professor of Childhood Policy, University of Edinburgh
This book takes up theoretical and practical discussions of children and young people's participation in public decision-making by taking into account existing literature from throughout childhood studies, sociology of childhood, children's human rights studies, decolonization studies, and intersectionality studies. Through case studies conducted in Brazil, Bangladesh, Sierra Leone, and Ghana, Cuevas-Parra provides extensive empirical data from beyond the Global North and confronts dominant views of power, inequalities, and agency. The understanding that children and young people are immersed in intersectional social structures, where they are never 'simply children' but individuals with multiple specific identities, cuts across the book.
Patricio Cuevas-Parra is Honorary Fellow of the Moray House School of Education at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and Director for Child Participation and Rights at World Vision International. He is also a member of the Childhood and Youth Studies.