Imagining Intergenerational Collaboration: Approaches to Equality in the Peruvian Movement of Working Children

• In Event: 410 - Regular Session. Children/Youth/Adolescents

Abstract

Founded in 1976, the Peruvian movement of working children is deeply committed to constructing a society in which kids and adults can engage with one another as equals. Arguing strongly for young people’s rights, self-determination, and capacity, this movement has sought to radically redefine the place of children and youth in economic, social, and political life. Based on ethnographic participant observation and in-depth interviews conducted with movement participants in Lima, Peru, this paper traces how adults and children within the movement of working children understand the movement’s vision of intergenerational equality. It seeks to move beyond the limitations of children’s liberation and children’s rights frameworks by identifying four distinct approaches to intergenerational equality expressed by movement participants – equality of dignity, equality of capacity, equality of insight, and equality of power. The paper disentangles and illuminates various approaches to thinking about children and adults as equals in order to consider some of the dynamics and challenges of each of these approaches. Further, it argues that intergenerational equality is not only a theoretical concern of childhood studies scholars, but is also an emergent set of practices and embodied political projects being developed by marginalized youth and their adult allies.

Author

• Jessica Karen Taft, University of California-Santa Cruz