ABSTRACT
In recent years, children's agency in enforcing and formulating their rights has been discussed with reference to the concept of citizenship. While children's active role within working children's movements is generally considered a paragon of this kind of agency, their far more widespread participation in activities against child labour has so far received scant recognition. Using findings from field research with non-working children and young people on their activities against child labour in two children's rights initiatives in South India, this chapter explores the meaning of lived citizenship from these children's perspectives in their institutional and everyday contexts. Drawing on the concept of citizenship as a practice referring to rights (Lister, 2007), an alternative conceptualisation of children's citizenship is developed based on children's practices in children's rights movements from children's own perspectives. The analysis highlights the importance of matters of context for their citizenship practices. It reveals the relevance of the generational order for the children's citizenship, which is characterised primarily by their own and their target group's status as children. The exploration of these children's practices provides new insights into the characteristics and challenges of realising citizenship as a child in the Majority World (among other places). Furthermore, the results question the widespread notion of non-working children's activities against child labour as non-agentic and emphasise the need to rethink normative assumptions about what constitutes “real” agency.
