Theorizing Children's Welfare Citizenship: Lived Citizenship, Social Recognition and Generations

Welfare research has traditionally viewed children as objects of social investment in. The chapter adopts a theoretical model that allows children’s everyday lives and the diversities and inequalities of children and childhoods to be the central focus of analysis in understanding their social citizenship. The chapter draws on the inter-connections of `lived citizenship’; social recognition theory and generational structures to scrutinise the governance, conditionalities and spaces for children’s citizenship in changing welfare states. Crucially, the chapter considers children as social, economic and political actors, rather than passive recipients of welfare. Children are citizens in the present, building and exercising their citizenship through intergenerational relations of care, solidarity and contribution. It explores how professionals can contribute or hinder these processes in the light of neoliberalism.