ABSTRACT
This chapter problematizes children’s emancipation processes simply through the re-creation of legal and political normativities of present liberal democratic societies. It focuses on the Brazilian context to discuss how its child rights’ framework and its neocolonial political order encumber the attainment of a more egalitarian and fair society for children. It argues that it is only through the political action of the oppressed – a process of children’s political subjectivization – that the status quo and its political gatekeepers can be challenged with the view to altering the pacts that produce and secure its present legal rights’ order. To illustrate the argument, some research findings of children’s demands for playtime in Brazilian state schools are analyzed as a process of children’s political staging. However improbable children’s politics seems to be, it can unveil the distinct and subtle features of processes of domination that naturalize situations of unfairness and inequality in present democracies.
