Children as New Citizens and the 'Best Interest of the Child' - a Challenge for Modern Democracies

Norwegian Centre for Child Research and Institute for Sociology and Political Science at the Norwegian University for Science and Technology, and the University of Sheffield are developing research based insights about the relationships between global dis courses on children's rights, welfare policy and children's experiences and perspectives of their welfare. Research is carried out in cooperation with the Department of Public and International Law at the University of Oslo (168360/S20). The research grou p consists of researchers from sociology, law, education, geography, social policy and social work. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) is part of globalisation processes, representing particular images of children as subjects that are clai med to be universal. The aim of this project is to explore from several different perspectives and on different societal levels (cf. Welfare Programme, p. 3) how global discourses on children's rights to participation (art 12) and the principle of the bes t interests of the child (art 3) in the CRC are interpreted and practiced in different societies. It seeks to elaborate larger concerns about the changing nature of democracy, childhood, and young people's experiences of their welfare, and critically inve stigate the concepts and approaches embedded in the global rights discourses. The 3 subprojects cover a broad range from a global to a local level, including different substantial spheres and cultural contexts: 1 Children's Perspectives on Citizenship and Nation-Building in a comparative perspective 2 Childhood's ambiguity - Politics and Practice on Children's rights in Context of family change 3 Refugee children, citizenship and 'the best interests' of the child. A comparative perspective is firmly inclu ded in the project.