Child citizenship: contemporary issues and implications for child participation

Abstract

This text proposes to make some reflections on the children's citizenship in the contemporary society from the theoretical construct of the Sociology of the Childhood that understands the child as social actor, being of the present, participatory and producer of cultures and childhood as a socio-historically generational category built. The reflection is based on the constitution of the citizen child. Part of the paths covered by the idea of incapacity and incompetence of the child in a perspective envisaged in modernity, it revises the concept of citizenship through the discussion proposed by Roger Hart (1992) called Ladder of Child Participation, to reach the status of participatory citizenship that conceives child as a social subject, implying not only the formal recognition of their rights, but also in the conditions of their exercise of participation. The current relevance of the theme turns to the imperative of childhood citizenship, its protagonism and the emancipatory potential of the experiences of children's participation in research, schools and public spaces facing the challenges imposed by contemporary society.