(SCY1b) Sociology of Childhood and Youth II: Generation: Expectation, age, family, and inequality

The papers in this session are curious about what is generated by generation. Generation invites us to consider the tensions produced through expectations about age, and what is produced within and carried through different stages of life (whether that be inequality, investment, or trauma). The papers in this session explore how ideas of generation—including the experiences of a specific generation, interactions between generations, and transgenerational trauma—shape young people’s lives. Tags: Enfants Et Jeunes

Organizers: Rebecca Raby, Brock University, Hunter Knight, Brock University; Chair: Hunter Knight, Brock University

Presentations

Dustin Ciufo, Trent University Durham

Young Peoples Experiences of Margins and Privilege in Humanitarian Disarmament: Resisting Militarism through Transnational Youth Activism for a Mine Free World

In her seminal 2006 article, Children and international relations: A new site of knowledge? Alison M.S. Watson encourages International Relations (IR) scholars to focus on how global affairs shape young people and how young people shape global affairs. Since this time, whether through closer engagement with Critical Childhood Studies (CCS) (Hanson and Nieuwenhuys, 2013; Vandenhole et al., 2015) or heightened focus within the discipline of IR proper (Huynh et al., 2015; Beier, 2020), there is a growing academic appreciation for the place of children amid international issues. Arriving at this moment has required a re-conceptualization of the child because according to Brocklehurst, “almost all definitions and concepts of children are premised on a notion of childhood as an experience which has or should have little in common with the political” (2015, 33). Therefore, it may seem antithetical when IR scholars are tasked with analyzing the relationship between militarism; society’s acceptance of force to solve political issues (Shepherd, 2018) and childhood. However, it is precisely this lens that facilitates the agency of children to offer a more robust understanding for how children and youth encounter militarism. This article examines the ways in which militarism is both endured and resisted through transnational youth activism in humanitarian disarmament. It contributes to the transnational youth activism literature (Hanson, 2023; Holzscheiter, 2020) by understanding the specific role of youth in navigating militarism by providing resistance to it through addressing the issue of landmines around the world. It is important to note the significance of the international movement to ban landmines. In the post-Cold War era, the United Nations Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention (also known as the Ottawa Treaty) is considered among the most successful global disarmament initiative. With 164 states parties having ratified this treaty, there has developed a valuable humanitarian norm against the use of these inhumane weapons of war. The convention recognizes that as landmines do not distinguish between a civilian or combatant, they violate the 4th Geneva Convention and should never be used in war (Geneva Convention, 1949). While much has been written on the movement (Alcade, 2014; Forster, 2019; McGoldrick, 2008), including how children and youth suffering has been invoked for the purposes of disarmament, there is very limited literature that has explored the participatory advocacy roles that youth have contributed to eliminating the use of landmines around the world. Having completed ten qualitative interviews with youth in mine action from both the minority and majority world at the 21st Meeting of States Parties on the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention at the Office of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland this past November 2023, this article wishes to contribute the voices of these youths to this important humanitarian disarmament initiative. In particular, this research has explored the varied experiences of margins and privilege that these youth have shared as they navigate militarization and campaign for a landmine free world. This approach can advance these youths’ voices to broaden the unfolding narrative of global mine action at both the transnational and national levels of analysis, to reveal how children and youth are indeed a critical site of knowledge in the field of IR broadly and CCS specifically.

Kathleen Manion, Royal Roads University; Shelley Jones, Royal Roads University

Between Childhood and Adulthood: Young Mothers in Uganda Co-Creating Ways to Meet their Life Goals while Combatting Systemic and Individual Discrimination

In Uganda, Covid-19 resulted in a “shadow pandemic” of teenage pregnancies and young mothers. Now these girls face a myriad of issues, notably systemic and individual discrimination and exclusion from school, family, and community, as they traverse complex experiences of still being children and yet at the same time parents. Most of these young mothers do not receive any support, financial or otherwise, from the fathers of their children. In fact, many young mothers became pregnant as a result of sexual assault or exploitation/coercion; yet, the male perpetrators typically face no legal, financial, or other repercussions for violating the rights of these girls, and are free to carry on with their lives, whilst the young mothers are forced to navigate precarious new realities whilst living in a state of intense and multidimensional vulnerability. Young mothers often face discrimination, marginalization, and abuse from their communities where they are considered to be “spoiled” or “useless” and are humiliated by verbal, and even physical, assaults to the extent that they do not want to leave their homes. Furthermore, parents and other family members often disown teenage mothers and force them to leave home to fend for themselves. Without money, jobs, skills, or support of any kind, young mothers and their babies frequently move from one place to the next, seeking shelter, food and possibilities for earning money to survive; yet, their options are limited and most find themselves in desperate straits. With motherhood, education also tends to be inaccessible to young mothers and girls generally have to forfeit their childhood life goals and dreams. While Uganda legislation now no longer allows schools to expel students who are pregnant or parenting, without additional support young mothers are often still unable to continue schooling, which limits their possibilities for future employment as well as critical social, emotional, and intellectual development. Although there is awareness at the national government level that the welfare of hundreds of thousands of young mothers in Uganda need urgent support to meet their socioemotional, financial, and educational needs, as stated in policies and initiatives specifically targeting this demographic, little has been done to learn from the young mothers themselves what is most needed to support them and enable them and their children to thrive. In response, this paper reports on an ongoing, SSHRC/NFRF-funded 2- year Feminist Participatory Action Research project in rural, southwest Uganda, involving 11 young mothers and their 13 children. The project focuses on working closely with the young mothers to learn about their needs and future hopes and co-create an environment that strives to best support them achieve these. We have developed a residential vocational environment which includes a communal home, nutritious food, health checks, psychosocial support, child care, vocational training (either hairdressing or tailoring), as well as other educational and personal development workshops, as requested by the young mothers (e.g., goal-setting, career advice, learning from women who were themselves, teenage mothers). Data collection includes individual interviews, focus group discussions with, and writing, photography, and arts-based artifacts by the young mothers as well as interviews and focus group discussions with stakeholders such as health and psychosocial care providers, community members, and NGO and government representatives. In looking at creating a more inclusive shared future, this research directly offers critical insight from the young mothers themselves about their realities and ideas for meeting their goals. A comprehensive data bank will enable us to inform policy and programming to better support these and other young Ugandan mothers who are struggling for their rights, equality, and opportunities for their and their children’s best futures.

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Non-presenting author: Tracey Smith-Carrier, Royal Roads University

Rebecca Raby, Brock University; Luiza Mattos Jobim da Costa, Brock University

Honouring both hardship and joy: reflecting on research into children's experiences in transitional housing

Homeless children and their families face many challenges, including precarity and stigma (Gaetz et al., 2021). These adversities and prejudices are particularly pronounced for those who are part of an already marginalized community (Blackstock et al. 2011; Gulliver-Garcia, 2016). Little scholarship examines the experiences of homeless children in Canada (Huot and Covell, 2019; Wiese and Brown, 2018), including those living in transitional housing. Our paper investigates the resonances and disconnections we have perceived between the harm and risk-based representations and experiences of homeless children, and positive observations from staff and in our participant-observation sessions. Significant scholarship has addressed children’s resilience in the face of adversity (Hart et al, 2016). However, a focus on resilience has also been criticized for individualizing responsibility and distracting from a focus on the unequal, structural contributors to adversity in children’s lives (Hart et al, 2016). Our interdisciplinary project follows such concerns to focus on contextual resilience (Ungar, 2004) within a social justice approach (Fairchild et al., 2017) that attends to children’s multidimensional lives within unequal structural contexts in need of change. We draw on semi-structured, qualitative interviews with seven staff members, alongside interactive, long-term participant-observation research with eleven children in temporary, after-school programming. In addition to recognizing that the children face a range of challenges, staff members raised their own and parents’ concerns about how to protect the from exposure to disturbing situations in transitional housing, including seeing drug paraphernalia and the presence of the police. Stigma surrounding homelessness (Fairchild et al., 2017) also led some of us, as researchers, to feel nervousness when beginning to conduct this research, a feeling that extended to our conversations with others about the research. Such stigma can divide groups of people and lead to presumptions about others’ capacities (Fairchild et al., 2017). Yet, as we engage in participant observation, stigma and related concerns about the children living in transitional housing often feel out of sync with more positive staff comments about the children’s interactions and our own observational note-taking about the rich, joyful, child-initiated activities that fill many of the after-school sessions. These findings underscore Fairchild et al.s (2017) arguments for a balanced representation of children that considers their strengths and capacities, not just their challenges and potential deficits. Additionally, we have been struck by the participants’ open and friendly interactions with staff and others that live within the facility, illustrating their emotional, social, and collaborative strengths, despite their challenging circumstances and awareness of potential dangers. Our paper explores these discrepancies between significant challenges in our participants’ lives and our day-to-day interactions with them by focusing on 1) how dangers were and are discussed by staff and children in the research space; 2) the concept of childhood innocence, how it is deployed in conversations about homeless children, and how it has shaped, informed, and complicated our research experiences; 3) how we are learning about and experiencing a breadth of engagements with the children, between the children, and between the children and others in the building, including many positive, fun, joyful, and often quite mundane interactions; 4) how we have thought about these interactions in terms of children’s relationality, resiliency, agency, coping, and playfulness; and 5): the importance of thinking about hardship and resiliency through a social justice lens. We observe that the participants recognize and are affected by the dangers the adults are concerned about, but that they are not consumed or singularly defined by them.

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Non-presenting authors: Christine Tardif-Williams, Brock University; Erika Alegria, Brock University

Lindsay C. Sheppard, York University; Melody Minhorst, Brock University; Rebecca Raby, Brock University

"I found this balance between being mature and childish": Age and early work

Research on children's and teenagers' early work tends to focus on safety concerns (Breslin et al. 2008; Zierold 2017), effects on education (Post and Pong 2009), parental involvement and family dynamics (Kao and Salerno 2014; Runyan et al. 2010), and skill-building opportunities (Hobbs et al. 2007). There is a small body of qualitative research that explores children and young teens' earliest experiences and thoughts about work in Canada (e.g., Yan, Lauer and Jhang 2008). We add to this literature, with a focus on children and teenagers' subjective thoughts about, and experiences with, work. We draw on a SSHRC-funded project that explores children and teenagers' experiences with paid work outside of the home, including jobs like babysitting, as well as serving fast-food. Our project includes interviews with children and teenagers in Ontario and British Columbia aged 11-16, as well as focus groups and surveys with teenagers in grade nine in Ontario. While all interview participants had work experience, some survey and focus group participants did not. In this paper, we ask: How do young teens think about and experience age in early work? Theoretically and methodologically, we are informed by a relational approach to child studies that centres young people's perspectives and experiences, recognizes the relevance of inequality, and attends to the relational complexities of their discursive and material participation (Raithelhuber 2016: Wyness 2013). We discuss three emergent themes. First, we discuss participants' variable and sometimes contradictory thinking about children and teenagers working, including their distinctions between "mature" work-ready teenagers and other teenagers who are not, as well as dangerous and appropriate "teen jobs", as distinct from "real" jobs. Second, we report on the saliency of age in participants' early work experiences. Here, our discussion emphasizes age in relations with employers, coworkers, and customers to participants' assumed competencies (from employers and themselves), alongside ageism and the relevance of other forms of social inequality, such as social class. Finally, we illustrate the related dynamics and performativity of age by engaging with moments where participants troubled a static understanding of age. For example, some teenagers reflected on how they play down or play up their age in particular work contexts, how they move between and remix the boundaries of "child"/ "child-ish" and "adult"/ "mature" at work, and how they flip the script on age relations, for example, when they train older employees. Across these themes we illustrate the complexity of age when discussed in relation to work, highlight how early work is a unique context for age-related experiences, and demonstrate how age-based and other inequalities can unfold and be challenged in work.