ABSTRACT
The citizenship chapter identifies the rapidly developing intersection between citizenship and childhood studies, before embarking on an analysis of recent attempts to re-theorize citizenship in a way that transforms our understandings of citizenship rather than of children. This analysis is complemented by a study of debates about the lowering of the voting age in Australia. The purpose of this chapter is to highlight the continued tension between empirical and normative divides in claims about children and their rights, and to use citizenship as a way to highlight the political context in which debates about who children are and what childhood ought to be play out. The context of political citizenship opens up a discussion of radical democratic theorist, Chantal Mouffe, and argues that children's citizenship debates are not just about re-theorizing citizenship, but challenging our understanding of the concept of the political itself.
