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Children and Citizenship in Britain

A Case for a Socially Interdependent Model of Citizenship

Manchester Metropolitan University, UK t.cockburn{at}mmu.ac.uk

In the 1980s and 1900s there has been a substantial amount of discussion around notions of citizenship. Given the marginal treatment of children in mainstream sociology in the 1980s, it is small wonder that no mention is made of children in these discussions. This article challenges most conceptions of citizenship as they currently stand in their exclusion of children. It adopts a social model of citizenship that emphasizes the ways in which people are connected to each other, rather than being viewed as acting as individualized, autonomous, rational beings separate from each other. The idea that citizenship is conferred upon people according to a system of `rights' and `obligations' should by its very nature assume that people are connected with others in profound ways. Distilling notions of rights, duties and obligations to those of `individuals' elides the crucial importance of human association. If people's associations with others form the starting point of ideas of citizenship, then the location of children within that society becomes less problematic.

Key Words: children • children's rights • citizenship

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