ABSTRACT
The introductory chapter of this book makes an opening case for the significance of children in social movements. This group of participants have been overlooked by social movement literature. Protest has been viewed as enacted by college-age youth and adults rather than children. Children’s imagined social location has been one of protected status, which denies the everyday reality for most children in the world. Many children experience oppression and become involved in resistance and social justice movements. As social movement participants they are not only understudied, but they are also undertheorized. Providing a theoretical approach about their participation offers significant challenges to current ideas of agency, mobilization, and rights in social movement studies. This book elaborates a theoretical typology for children’s participation in social movements, illustrated with historic and contemporary empirical examples of children participating within social movements internationally. After defining the categories of the typology—strategic participants, participants by default, and active participants—this introduction outlines each of the chapters in the book.
