Theorizing Children’s Social Citizenship: New Welfare States and Inter-generational Justice?

This article argues that children’s social status and positioning as children needs to be foregrounded in discussions of social citizenship and the re/development of the welfare state against a backdrop of neo-liberal economic and social reform. Set within a theoretical model that highlights the circular and de-centered exercise of power across fields of action, the subject of children’s citizenship, understood as a “citizenship habitus” is explored, taking the exemplar of education and migrant children’s positioning within schools.