Chapter 1 Critical child rights theory : Power, discrimination, and epistemic injustice

Abstract

This book is the first to comprehensively develop the concept of childism to understand, study, and analyze age-based discrimination against children. It presents a critical theory to help comprehend intersecting prejudice against children and to examine the weak implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and in what ways violations against children can be analyzed through the intersections of racist, sexist, and ableist discrimination. The book further offers scholars a new perspective when studying structural forms of discrimination and oppression against children and provides professionals with a new vocabulary on prejudice targeting children when assessing theory, policy, and praxis on ‘child-friendly’ and ‘child-centered’ initiatives that overlook the need to protect children against discrimination. This book will be of key interest to scholars, students, and practitioners of human rights, child and youth studies, education, prejudice studies, the United Nations and child law, and more broadly to sociology, social policy, psychology, and social work.