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CHILDREN AND CITIZENSHIP Ruth Lister Professor of Social Policy University of Loughborough
Paper presented at a Glasgow Centre for the Child & Society seminar, 3 November 2005. Introduction Delighted to have the opportunity to give this paper at the centre. My paper is about childrens citizenship in the particular cultural context of the UK, though as Kay Tindall has reminded me, even within that context some very real differences exist between Scotland and England and Wales, not all of which I may have grasped! Ive only recently started to think seriously about childrens relationship to citizenship, having focused in my work on gendered citizenship, and this paper represents fairly preliminary thoughts rather than a finished statement. Therefore will v much welcome your feedback, given your expertise in the area of childhood. My interest in childrens relationship to citizenship is partly in response to the dominant political construction of the child as citizen-worker of the future, which is most marked in the New Labour discourse around children, which Ive critiqued. (I note in contrast that part of the Scottish Executives vision for children is that they should be responsible citizens dk how far that reflects a genuinely different construction of childrens citizenship to that of New Labour; and of course responsibility a common theme) But also my interest has been prompted by some criticisms of my own work. One was in response to a chapter based on research, with colleagues, into young peoples citizenship a longitudinal, qualitative study covering young people who were aged 16-25 over the 3 year period of the research. We called the study transitions to citizenship. I used T.H. Marshalls notion of children and young people as citizens in the making (1950: 25) contrasting it with New Labours construction of young people as deficient citizens (Lister et al., 2005). In a postscript to the chapter, Tom Burke, a 19-year-old student, savaged us as myth destroyers to myth makers in one short and degrading sentence. He argued that the notion of citizens in the making is just as fundamentally flawed as that of deficient citizens. It perpetuates a passive view of young people who are idly waiting for citizenship, and if they are lucky, it will be bestowed upon them by others. It does not give young people their true credit as social actors in their own right nor does it recognise the contribution that young people are making to our society

2 todayI am not a citizen in the making. I am a citizen today. (Burke, 2005: 53) While I dont agree that the notion of citizens in the making carries all those connotations, or at least that was not what was intended, the criticism did give me pause for thought. Another comment on my work which prompted me to reflect was in Hill and Tisdalls Children & Society which I only read recently. They cite from a CPAG pamphlet I wrote back in 1990, stating that I did not have a problem with childrens dependency, because children had a restricted form of citizenship (1997: 37). They go on to ask some fundamental questions, notably whether the concepts of childhood and citizenship are compatible. This question they point out depends just as much on how citizenship is defined as it does on childhoods definition. Certainly, a definition of citizenship could be made that would definitely include childrenBut would such a definition of citizenship retain the basic building blocks of the concept? (ibid: 38). This is the question to which the paper now turns by unpacking the different elements of citizenship, after some general reflections on the issue. It will then consider whether there are any lessons to be learned from the feminist critique of citizenship.

General reflections I want to start by briefly considering how childrens relationship to citizenship has been represented in general terms in the literature. This is possibly a caricature. But it is possible to identify two extremes in the literature. On the one hand is the citizenship literature. This has only recently and very patchily started to address what citizenship means for children in the here and now. More typically it has either tended to ignore children altogether, implicitly equating citizenship with adulthood, or it has portrayed children as citizens of the future, citizens-in-waiting (Cutler and Frost, p8) or at best citizens in the making in Marshalls phrase. Other terms used have been learner citizens (Arnot and Dillabough, 2000) and apprentice citizens (Wyness et al., 2004: 82). At the other extreme, there is one strand in the childhood literature, which challenges this by simply asserting that children are citizens. So, for example, a report from the Carnegie Young People Initiative, which covers children and young people aged 10 and above, claims they are citizens and should be treated as such (Cutler and Frost, 2001: 2). Of course, there is a wide space between these two extremes, which increasingly is being addressed by some of the literature, particularly the childhood literature. The childhood literature is also important because our understanding of childrens relationship to citizenship will be rooted in how we see children. The contemporary sociology of childhoods construction of children as social actors with agency and varying degrees of competence clearly opens up possibilities for the recognition of children as active citizens in a way that a construction of them as passive objects of adult policies and practices did not (Stasiulis). Beings are more easily

3 seen as active citizens in the here and now than are becomings whose citizenship is seen as a potential and a status to be achieved in the future. Popular and political constructions in the UK often reflect ambivalence in popular attitudes towards children. A tendency to sentimentalise and idealise children (and to emphasise their need for care and protection) has existed alongside reluctance to accommodate their presence in the adult world and increasingly an element of hostility and fear, as reflected in the recent demonisation by the media of feral children (leading to increased emphasis on their need for control). Here childrens agency is seen as a negative rather than a positive. So-called feral children are typically the children of the poor. This acts as a reminder that just as adults relationship to citizenship is mediated by social divisions, such as class, gender, race, and disability, so is that of children. Children living in poverty face particular obstacles to citizenship. Age is especially significant for childrens citizenship not just because it serves to define the category but also, because of its relationship to capacity within the category children. Jeremy Roche points to the distinction, increasingly drawn in the childhood literature, between the younger child and the young person. The arguments for the increased participation of children in decision-making affecting their lives are both practically and theoretically more compelling the older the child is he concludes (1999: 483). A rather different perspective on age can be found in the JRF report on Young Childrens Citizenship, which focused on under-12-year-olds and in particular those aged under seven, including babies. In their contribution, Marchant and Kirby are critical of the way this group is rendered invisible as citizens and of the assumption that it is only older children who can participate as citizens although I am not convinced by the inclusion of babies with regard to citizenship capacity as such. In her introduction, Bren Neale points out that the inclusion of older children and young people is relatively straightforward. They are expected to assume adult modes of behaving and communicating, so that it requires little change on the part of adults. Citizenship for young children, on the other hand she argues requires some effort on the part of adults to accommodate childrens varied modes of doing, saying and being (2004: 15). A recent UNICEF report on The Evolving Capacities of the Child by Gerison Lansdown provides a compass to help navigate the difficult question of age and capacity. It explores the meaning of Article 5 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, focusing on evolving capacity rather than age in relation to the balance between participatory and protection rights. While capacities evolve with age, in practice the actual ages at which a child acquires competencies vary according to her life experiences and social and cultural environment on the one hand and the nature of the competencies and the situations in which they are required to be exercised on the other. At every stage, the report argues, regard must

4 be had to childrens right to respect for their capacities (p. 15) and to childrens agency. In practice, adults consistently underestimate childrens capacities (pp30-1), raising questions about their ability to assess them (Tisdall et al., 2003). Ill come back to the specific question of citizenship capacity later. So, having considered childrens relationship to citizenship in very general terms, the paper now unpacks the different elements of citizenship because in its substantive form, it is not a unitary phenomenon. Elizabeth Cohen has, rightly, criticised accounts of childrens citizenship, which treat one element of citizenship as if it were the whole. It may be that the fit between children and citizenship is closer for some elements than others.

Unpacking childrens citizenship Membership At one level, childrens claim to citizenship lies in their membership of the citizenship community. Their relationship to that community may be different from that of adults but that does not necessarily affect the claim to citizenship status. Roche proposes that the demand that children be included in citizenship is simply a request that children be seen as members of society too, with a legitimate and valuable voice and perspective (1999: 479). He later equates being counted as a member of the community with participation (ibid: 484). He cites Martha Minows observation that including children as participants alters their stance in the community, from things or outsiders to members. This points to something of a conundrum: children can make their claim to be members of the citizen-community through active participation in it; but in order to be able to participate they first need to be accepted as members of the citizen-community. And that acceptance is, in practice, partly contingent on children demonstrating their capacity to be participatory citizens. Evaluations of initiatives that have enabled children and young people to participate, as well as research into childrens participation in social action groups, testify to how they strengthen young peoples sense of belonging to the community as well as equipping them with the skills and capacities required for effective citizenship (Cutler and Frost, 2001: 6). This all suggests that, while at one level all children are members of the community and therefore have the status of citizens in a thin sense, recognition of children as citizens in the thicker sense of active membership requires facilitating their participation as political and social actors. This is about more than just participation in individual decisions about ones own life made by parents and professionals but opens up participation in wider collective decision-making. Ben-Arieh and Boyer, who discuss child participation at both levels, explicitly equate it with child citizenship and assert that its denial is unacceptable from the perspective of childrens well-being and current and future citizenship (2005: 51). This

5 brings us to the question of whether participation constitutes a right of citizenship for children. Rights Childrens right to express an opinion and to have that opinion taken into account in any matter or procedure affecting the child is enshrined in Article 12 of the UN Convention. In the UK, such a right is contained in various pieces of childrens legislation. There is not, though, a wider right to participation; and the same is, of course, true of adults. But, as the Carnegie report points out, participatory rights are of particular significance for children and young people aged under 18 who do not have the vote. This is even more the case in the context of social exclusion, where childrens voices (as well as adults) are even less likely to be heard, as Hill, Tisdall and colleagues have pointed out. It is the lack of the vote that perhaps raises the biggest question mark over the status of childrens citizenship. The right to vote in national elections is what divides denizens (i.e. people with a legal and permanent residence status) from citizens, since denizens in theory normally enjoy full social and civil rights. It could be argued that without the vote a person is not a full citizen. As against that, the vote does not seem to figure very prominently in public understandings of citizenship. Moreover, given low turnout in recent elections, particularly among young people, participation in informal politics, social action or public decision-making that affects their lives may constitute a more important signifier of effective citizenship for many people. That is not, however, a reason for rejecting current demands for extension of the right to the vote down to age 16. With the advent of citizenship education and the spread of participatory initiatives, the case for this has arguably been strengthened. The rights contained in the UN Convention constitute human rights articulated specifically in relation to children. As such they represent ethical or moral rights rather than directly legally enforceable citizenship rights (unless incorporated into national law, which for the most part they are not in the UK). Nevertheless they provide what Michael Freeman calls an important advocacy tool, a weapon to use in battles to secure recognition (2005: 66) and as such they offer a resource for citizenship although one which is jeopardised by poverty and social exclusion. Freeman uses education as an example of a right contained in the Convention, which is not translated into a right as such in the UK, although I understand children do now have a right to education in Scotland. In England and Wales at least, it is parental not child choice, which is a governing principle of education policy. Marshall did, in fact, write of education as a genuine social right of citizenship but he argued that fundamentally it should be regarded, not as the right of the child to go to school, but as the right of the adult citizen to have been educated (p. 25). Interestingly, the right to have access to free education for children came

6 top of the list of rights people thought they possess in the Home Office Citizenship Survey. The main social citizenship right to carry legally enforceable entitlements is social security, including child benefit. It is a right that children receive only by proxy through their parent(s), to use Jones and Wallaces phrase, and it is a right which, they observe, has become increasingly agestructured (1992: 49). Jones and Wallace also point to how children acquire different citizenship rights (civil, political and social) at different ages before, at and after the age of majority. This reflects how in the words of the UNICEF report, age is the key determinant in the acquisition of formal rights in many societies even though this inflexible model does not reflect childrens actual and differing capacities (pp. 49-50). With regard to civil rights, Cohen suggests that many of the classical civil rights are typically regarded as irrelevant or inappropriate to the circumstances of childhood (2005: 224); children are excluded almost wholesale from the freedoms that compose the oldest category of rights associated with citizenship (ibid). Childrens disqualification from adult citizenship rights is justified on grounds of their need for protection and their dependence on adults. Few would question that some distinction is valid on those grounds. That does not mean, though, that the current configuration of their rights is necessarily logical or appropriate from the point of view of the acquisition of full citizenship status, particularly in relation to what has been called todays responsibilized child. Interestingly, in our study the young people found it much harder to articulate their rights as citizens than they did their responsibilities.

Responsibilities There are two overlapping aspects to childrens responsibilities as citizens: those that are imposed and/or encouraged by the state and those that children exercise of their own accord. A key responsibility of citizenship is to obey the law (deemed the most important in the Home Office Citizenship Survey). The effective age of criminal responsibility is now only 10 in E&W and 8 in Scotland, in defiance of the recommendations of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. Children are a prime target of anti-social behaviour orders (with even BASBOs now being mooted for children under the age of criminal responsibility) and they can now be subject to special child curfews. There has also been talk of making some of the social rights of parents conditional on the behaviour of their children. However, policy is not consistent. Such and Walker contrast the responsibilities attributed to children in crime and anti-social behaviour policies with the lack of responsibility accorded them in family policy. They observe that it is notable that children appear only to be granted agency and autonomy in the context of wrong-doing: children are able to be wilfully irresponsible but not wilfully responsible (2005, p.46). Their article reports on an exploratory study of childrens own understandings of

7 responsibility in the context of family life. They conclude that responsibility is a meaningful and everyday aspect of many childrens lives. To shy away from recognising thisserves to deny children social citizenship (pp54-6). Its possible to point to examples of how children assume responsibility in both the private and public spheres. In the private sphere, an important example highlighted in the literature is the heavy responsibility adopted by children who take on the role of young carers. In the public sphere, a number of research studies as well as media reports reveal a fair amount of formal and informal volunteering and social action among children and young people. Although I am talking about children in the UK, it is worth noting here that in many countries in the global South, children have to take on a range of adult responsibilities in both private and public spheres, particularly where their families have been ravaged by HIV-Aids. In addition, in some countries children are used as soldiers a traditional duty of citizenship.

Equality of status, respect and recognition To treat others with respect is seen by the general public as a key responsibility of citizenship. It is one that children are as capable of exercising as anyone else. Conversely, Bren Neale defines citizenship for children as an entitlement to recognition, respect and participation (2004: 1). Yet, as hinted at already, a common theme in the literature is the lack of recognition and respect for the responsibilities that children and young people exercise. This reflects a wider sense that children are not respected and therefore do not enjoy genuine equality of status as citizens in the here and now. This is particularly true of children being brought up in poverty. It is therefore encouraging that the Scottish Executives vision for children rests in part on them being respected and responsible. As Barbara Hobson and I have argued with reference to gender and citizenship lack of recognition implies exclusion and marginalisation from full participation in the community. The childrens movement, which according to Stasiulis enacts an alternative imaginary of childrens active citizenship, can be understood as a struggle for recognition.

Lessons from the feminist critique? This brings us to the possible parallels between the feminist critique and the critiques of childrens relationship to citizenship. There are clear parallels but I dont think that means one can simply transpose the feminist critique without adaptation. The first point to make is that just as feminists have exposed the male template underpinning traditional meanings of citizenship so can we argue that it is an adult template, which measures children against an adult norm and which ignores the particularities of childrens relationship to citizenship. The difference is that, in modern times at least, citizenships universalism was supposed to cover women, in theory at least, whereas

8 mainstream accounts of citizenship do not typically make any claims to include children. The reasons used to justify womens earlier exclusion from citizenship are very similar to those used to justify childrens exclusion: notably their lack of competence, in particular to be rational (Hill and Tisdall, p25), and their dependency. Hill and Tisdall question the use of rationality as a criterion, pointing out that adults do not necessarily always act rationally in decisionmaking whatever their capacities. Priscilla Alderson states that competence seems to be as much in the eye of the beholder as the ability of the child (1992, p. 175). This, she suggests, points to a need to develop new ways of defining and assessing childrens competence. According to the UNICEF report, most of the thinking on this has been in relation to medical consent. What is needed is the same kind of assessment of the capacities necessary for citizenship. While I think there is a legitimate question concerning the competence for citizenship of babies and very young children, the literature is abound with examples of where children have otherwise shown themselves to be competent in the skills and capacities required for participation as citizens. Moreover, as Alderson has pointed out, treating children with respect can markedly increase their competence (1992: 175). The treatment in the literature of dependence as an obstacle to childrens citizenship echoes some of the arguments in the feminist literature. Writing about young people, Jones and Wallace explicitly draw parallels to argue that the extended dependence of young people as a result of policy developments has damaged their status as citizens. More recently, Jones and Bell claim that citizenship is meaningless without economic independence (2000: 60). Children in our society of course lack it completely, except for whatever part-time wages they may earn. As noted early, any social security rights for children are by proxy. A key feminist policy argument has been that womens right to social security should be individualised and not mediated through their partner. This is, I think, a more difficult argument to apply to children who, so long as they are required to attend school and do not have the potential to earn a wage to support themselves, are necessarily dependent economically upon parents or other adults who are responsible for their protection. Once they are 16, the situation changes. And if one were to pay say child benefit direct to children above a certain age, the implications for (usually) mothers ability to juggle household finances would need to be considered. While childrens economic dependence is incompatible with full rights as social citizens, it does not follow that children lose their claim to be active, participating citizens. As Stasiulis argues, dependency arising from the need for protection is not incompatible with the right to participation. To quote: A framework of rights that implies that only fully autonomous people may enjoy participation rights normalizes individual independence. Indeed, the mutual reinforcement of protection and participation rights is

9 integral to the model of childrens citizenship advanced in the childrens movement (2002: 513-4). The critique of the normalisation of independence chimes with a strand of feminist argument. Iris Youngs distinction between independence as autonomy (the ability to make and act upon ones choices) and as selfsufficiency (not needing help or support from anyone in meeting ones needs and carrying out ones life plans) is helpful here, for the autonomy associated with citizenship does not require an illusory self-sufficiency. Moss and Petrie (2005) point out that feminist arguments about human interdependence can be applied to children as well as adults. This claim is supported by Such and Walkers exploratory study, which indicated that crucial components of responsibility were found to be its interdependence and relational nature (2005: 48). Although childrens dependence is a product of the care they receive, whereas womens stems from the care they provide, as observed earlier some children are also care-providers. As such, the work involved would be recognised as the exercise of citizenship responsibility in some feminist frameworks. Children may also help adult care providers in the home in various ways, particularly in two-earner and in lone parent families. In their discussion of childrens dependence, Moss and Petrie endorse the feminist critique of the normative image of the independent wage-earning citizen which is at heart of contemporary notions of social participation and citizenship (2005: 85). The displacement of that normative image in feminist critiques is thus also relevant for children in education, whose claim to citizenship cannot, in Western societies, lie through wage-earning, even if some children do earn a part-time wage. As in the case of women, the link between (in)dependence, care and citizenship is mediated by the public-private divide for children too. Cohen draws the analogy between coverture, under which married women forfeited independent legal status, and the way in which children are folded into the legal identity of their parents upon birth (2005: 229). So, she argues, where women once ceded a public identity to their husbands and retreated (often reluctantly) to the private realm, children remain privatized by analogous forces (ibid.). Similarly, in the same way that it was once considered permissible for men to inflict violence upon their female partners in the private sphere, so, in the UK, it is still lawful for parents to hit their children.(Scotland?) Moreover, whereas women are now generally part of the public as well as the private sphere, commentators have pointed to how children are increasingly being excluded from public space (or are concentrated in adult-controlled spaces). According to Save the Children childrens use of public space has decreased significantly since the 1970s (2005: 3). Wyness et al argue that children are located within the hidden private sphere and at best viewed as political animals in potentia (2004: 86).

10 Another reason why children and to a lesser extent today women are not seen as political animals or citizens reflects a distinction that can be made between formal and informal forms of politics. Both women and children who participate in informal politics frequently describe what they are doing as not political. Traditionally, informal forms of politics and social action have not counted as political citizenship in the same way that formal politics has. Even more perhaps than feminist accounts, critiques of the construction of children's citizenship are centred on power relationships. Both womens and childrens economic dependence are closely linked to unequal power relations. Womens and childrens groups are both fighting for more power as citizens and both have, inevitably, encountered resistance. More generally, Roche notes that one constant theme in much writing about childrens rights is the deep sense of powerlessness and exclusion felt by children and young people (1999: 478). Indeed, Hill and Tisdall suggest that power is the main differentiating factor between children and adults (1997: 20). Some inequality of power is perhaps inevitable in a way that it is not between adult women and men. Tom Burke, the student mentioned at the outset, makes clear that he is not suggesting that the citizenship young people enjoy is the same citizenship that adults have for the very reason that in almost every circumstance young people have less power than adults and adult-run institutions, such as government (2005: 52) Burkes statement that young peoples citizenship is not the same as that of adults brings us to a final parallel between the gendered citizenship and childrens citizenship literatures: whether claims to citizenship are made on the basis of sameness/equality or difference. The argument for childrens citizenship is predicated in part on a fundamental sameness and equality as human beings. Moreover, to state the obvious, children become adults, whereas women do not normally become men. Any arguments based on difference are therefore arguments that pertain only to a particular stage of the life-course. Nevertheless these arguments are salient. Roche, for instance, comments that save for the child liberationists, no one is arguing that children are identical to adults or that they should enjoy exactly the same bundle of civil and political rights as adults (1999: 487). Nor is anyone arguing that they should exercise exactly the same bundle of responsibilities rather, again redolent of feminist arguments, that the responsibilities they do exercise should be recognised. And some advocates of the imaginary of the active child citizen acknowledge the dangers of casting participation as a responsibility for children. The right of the child not to participate must also be respected. Stasiulis, for instance, asks does childrens citizenship then tend to devalue the right of children to remain children with all its implications such as playfulness, lightness and childishness? (2002: 509). Proponents of childrens active citizenship need to be wary of subordinating childrens right to be children (as understood in this particular cultural context) to the higher calling of the demands of citizenship in the here and now in an instrumental way that mirrors the treatment of children as citizens of the future.

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Concluding comments Roche concludes his piece with a statement resonant of feminist arguments: traditional notions of citizenship will have to change to accommodate children (1999: 485). But he does not really say how. This takes us back to the question posed by Hill and Tisdall with which I started. I am not going to attempt a definitive answer. I do not think we can discard what they call the building blocks of citizenship in order to accommodate children. But feminist critiques have shown how some of those building blocks can be re-shaped in order better to do so. A key move is one that Roche makes earlier in his article, namely to get away from the idea of substantive citizenship as an absolute the idea that you either are a citizen or you are not. That has been my purpose in unpacking the building blocks and analysing childrens citizenship in relation to each one of them. Roche prefers Bulmer and Rees notion of partial citizenship to Cockburns more linear unfolding or incremental citizenship. I am not so sure. Bulmer and Rees lump together women, children and people incapacitated in some way under the label of partial citizenship. This fails to distinguish between the elements of partial citizenship that are more or less accepted as a corollary of a persons dependent status and those that are challenged as illegitimate. Thus, there is no justification for womens status as partial citizens whereas some aspects of childrens citizenship status arguably can be thought of as unfinished. Neale describes citizenship as an unfolding process that cannot simply be switched on at some arbitrary point in a childs life (2004: 17). This is a different kind of partial citizenship to that which stems from the fact of being a woman, or say a member of a minority ethnic group. Cohen uses the term semicitizenship to denote childrens partial citizenship. She describes it as a middle ground in which children are citizens by certain standards and not by others (2005: 234). Ive elsewhere drawn a distinction between being a citizen and acting as a citizen: to be a citizen, in the legal and sociological sense, means to enjoy the rights of citizenship necessary for agency and social and political participation. To act as a citizen involves fulfilling the full potential of the status. Those who do not fulfil that potential do not cease to be citizens; moreover, in practice participation tends to be more of a continuum than an all or nothing affair and people might participate more or less at different points in the life-course. This formulation does not work for children. Rather, some children are acting as citizens without first enjoying the full rights of citizenship. In fact, much of the literature that is making the case for recognition of children as citizens is not so much arguing for an extension of adult rights (and obligations) of citizenship to children but recognition that their citizenship practice (where it occurs) constitutes them as de facto, even if not complete de jure, citizens. It is also calling for adults to transform their

12 relationship to children particularly in terms of respectful behaviour and changes in the way participatory citizenship is practised in order to accommodate children. Finally, it is challenging the idea that it is sufficient to treat children purely as citizens of the future. As Cohen points out, a society that is preoccupied with the adults children will become is likely to pay less attention to the individuals that they are at various ages and stages of development and to the particular needs and interests of child citizens as a group (2005: 230).