ABSTRACT
Political and scientific discourse increasingly stresses that children are actors with their own rights. However, the limits of agency are particularly clear when children become victims of violence. This is especially the case with abuse and maltreatment. In this chapter, we aim to provide insight into the production of agency in this particular institutional setting. We analyse how children and children's agency are represented and conceptualised in ten child protection case files produced by the child protection services. We analyse the form in which agency or the deprivation of agency is produced through assessments undertaken by the child protection services. In this sense, agency is not treated as a human property but as an effect of the interaction between social workers and children through assessments and the preparation of cases in documentation work.
