Critical Children's Rights Studies

In recent decades, children’s rights have gained a significant position within academic research, evolving into a distinct field alongside childhood studies or human rights studies. This introductory chapter provides an overview of three key streams within children’s rights research, which together illustrate the field’s ongoing development and acknowledge its inherent complexity. The first stream focuses on the implementation of children’s rights, emerging in the period following the adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. The second stream, which has gained prominence in recent years, is referred to as Children’s Rights Studies, representing a more interdisciplinary and contextual approach to the subject. The third and most recent stream, Critical Children’s Rights Studies, is closely related to Children’s Rights Studies but is distinguished by its explicit critical orientation. This critical perspective is defined by three central themes: (i) the normative turn, (ii) an emphasis on equality and (iii) a focus on epistemic injustice. The emergence of Critical Children’s Rights Studies advocates an alternative approach that raises critical questions about mainstream discourses on children’s rights, not to reject the concept but to deepen and refine its understanding. This chapter tracks the various streams and, based on developments in the Critical Children’s Rights Studies field, develops a five-pronged framework which framed the contributions to this volume.