Childhoods as political projects: A comparison between cultural nationalism and minority activism in Japan

Abstract

Recent studies in the social sciences have focused the attention on the role of children in cultural politics, in particular on children’s experiences in nationalism, as well as on their participation in inter-ethnic relations. In line with this research, this study aims to investigate the relationship between childhood and political action and to conceptualize “childhood” as a contested political notion. More specifically, it discusses variations in the definition of “childhood” in “majority” and “minority” like contexts with a special focus on Japan. This article compares the Agency for Cultural Affairs and its programs for the promotion of “Japanese culture,” with the Dōwa Education’s programs on the buraku issue, and discusses how the resulting definitions of “childhood” are based upon various representations of “group identities” and upon different conceptions of educational processes. In this sense, the notion of “childhood” reflects a variety of political projects based on various institutional agendas, upon which different understandings of children’s role in society depend.

Keywords

childhood cultural nationalism Japan minority

Introduction: varieties of childhoods

Recent studies in the social sciences have focused their attention on the cultural politics of childhood, in particular on children’s role in nationalism (Cheney, 2007; Hart, 2002; Holloway and Valentine, 2000; Scourfield et al., 2006; Stephens, 1995), on children’s participation in inter-ethnic relations (Cangià, 2012; Pache-Huber and Spyrou, 2012; Spyrou, 2002; Spyrou and Christou, 2014), as well as on the intersection of ethnicity and school (Cangià, 2014; Connolly, 1998; Pagani et al., 2011; Pagani and Robustelli, 2010; Schiffauer et al., 2006). An important example is the work of Stephens and other authors (Stephens, 1997), which analyzes nationalism and the nation-state building project in relation to childhood and investigates how each informs the other. National consciousness and childhood are viewed as mutually constitutive, and children are regarded as social actors (Jenks, 2004), who are implicated in various processes of nation-building and can actively make sense of “identity” and propose new meanings (Kjørholt, 2004; Pache-Huber and Spyrou, 2012).

In line with this research, the article aims to investigate the relationship between childhood and political action, with a special focus on Japan. More specifically, it explores how definitions of “childhood” change depending on different forms of social activism and institutional agendas (Qvortrup, 2005a; Qvortrup et al., 2009), both in majority (Japanese cultural nationalism) and minority contexts (buraku minority activism). In particular, I will discuss how varying cultural programs engage children differently, in order to maintain or transform groups’ boundaries. In this context, the definition of “Japanese culture” is based upon different meanings relating to “childhood” and to children’s role in political action, as carriers of defined cultural values and “bright” group’s boundaries (Alba, 2005) (for cultural transmission), on the one hand, and as contributors to the transformation of groups’ boundaries (for social change), on the other. At the same time, definitions of “childhood” are based upon different conceptions of culture, educational processes, and group identities. In this sense, the notion of “childhood” reflects a variety of political projects with different ends, upon which the definition of children’s role in society is based.

I will compare the Agency for Cultural Affairs’ (hereafter ACA) children programs on the promotion of “Japanese culture,” with the Dōwa Education’s programs on the buraku discrimination. The ACA is a branch of the Japanese Ministry of Education, established in 1968 through a merger of the Cultural Bureau of the Ministry of Education and the Cultural Properties Protection Commission with the principal aim of promoting and disseminating different aspects of culture, as well as preserving cultural properties and historical sites. The ACA represents an example of “Japanese cultural nationalism,” with a special focus on language, religion, arts, and cultural properties. “Cultural nationalism” is here analyzed in its “official” form (McVeigh, 2003), as state-promoted ideologies on “Japanese culture” (McVeigh, 2003).

Aside from central institutions such as the ACA, other local governmental and non-governmental actors make use of the notion of “culture” in identity discourses through educational channels. Here, I explore the buraku “minority activism”—namely, those community-based programs implemented at the local level in collaboration with local branches of the Buraku Liberation League (hereafter BLL¹)—as a form of non-official and popular cultural nationalism. These programs include, among other things, educational activities intended for children, framed within the context of the Dōwa/Human Rights Education, the Kaiho Kodomo-kai (the BLL children’s liberation organizations), the nationally framed “town-making” (furusato-zukuri) measures, as well as independent grassroots initiatives (e.g. museums, street performances). Dōwa (literally “assimilation”) Education was initiated by the Japanese government and the BLL in order to address buraku and other forms of discrimination. Kinegawa educational project (the one analyzed in the article) represents an example of the implementation of Dōwa Education in Tokyo. The initiatives organized by teachers and buraku minority activists in Kinegawa specifically target children living in the area and facing buraku and similar forms of discrimination, through the promotion of the local culture of leather-work.

These forms of activism seem to play an important role in the re-elaboration of the meaning both of “buraku identity” and of “Japanese national culture” (Cangià, 2013a, 2013b) and are hence important research contexts that need further exploration in comparison with the educational programs implemented at the national level. One important difference between these two contexts refers to the definition of “childhood.” The different conceptions of children’s participation in political action seem to depend on different social and political factors (e.g. power, social status, and political strategic action) and are based on the social status to which children are assigned, as well as on the role they are supposed to play, either as influencing political actors or as “the future of society” (Qvortrup, 2005a). The article, thanks to its focus on those political contexts—other than school—in which education plays a role, would therefore contribute to revisiting the notion of “childhood” and, more in general, to the theoretical debate on children’s agency in identity processes. In particular, I wish to contribute to studying children as “contemporaries in intergenerational terms after a long period in which notions of children as the next generation have been the reigning concept and conventional wisdom,” as well as to making “visible new forms of participation by children” (Qvortrup, 2005b: 18–19).

Research context and methods

The article is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Japan on the buraku issue, that is, the problem of discrimination toward a category of people labeled as Burakumin (literally “hamlet people”), usually described as descendants of Japan’s outcasts of pre-modern times. These people were historically engaged in special occupations (e.g. leather industry, meat-packing, and street entertainment) and compelled to live in separate areas (the buraku).

During my fieldwork, I visited Naniwa and Kinegawa leather towns, respectively, in Osaka and in Tokyo, in particular museums, various performances, and community events, and participated in some activities organized with children of buraku and other minority backgrounds (Cangià, 2013b). The methodology was based on a variety of qualitative methods including participant observation, informal interviewing with teaching staff, museum personnel, children, districts’ residents, supporters of the BLL, performers, and spectators. On the occasion of this larger study, I analyzed the different representations of the buraku issue by the various actors involved. In particular, in Kinegawa district, I participated in informal gatherings when I had the chance to meet and talk with different people and children. My participation during the local activities was important in order to understand how children were concretely involved in the neighborhood and in the educational project. I tried to let informants talk about the topics they considered significant, occasionally directing more specific questions to enrich the discussion about leather-working and the life in the neighborhood. As a framework for the analysis, I also took into consideration the wider context of Japanese “cultural nationalism” through a look at various narratives and initiatives organized at the national and international level (policies of internationalization—kokusaika, and of multiculturalism—tabunka kyosei), including the ACA’s children programs on the promotion of Japanese culture.

For this article, I draw on analysis of data that specifically focus on children’s engagement in the locality, including my interviews and conversations with museum personnel, teachers, BLL activists, and children. State cultural nationalism and the buraku minority activism are both important research contexts in which definitions of cultural identities proliferate through different channels, including—and most importantly—various educational programs.

In the following paragraphs, I will introduce these contexts. I will finally discuss the differences between the two and the different understandings of “childhood” that emerge from these programs. The following discussion will show how, whereas the ACA looks at children as mere bearers of adults’ cultural values, the buraku activists consider children as active social agents in society, who, with their own personal experiences and their participation, can bring to the fore new meanings of identities and diversity.

Japanese cultural nationalism: the ACA

Since the beginning of the 19th century until the 1980s, “tradition” and “national culture” (minzoku no bunka) became key notions in the Japanese government’s vernacular and were adopted in a number of programs at the local and national level, as well as in commercial media, historical fiction, mass literature, and touristic projects (Cangià, 2013a; Guichard-Anguis and Moon, 2011; Vlastos, 1998). These notions served the purpose of promoting and strengthening a sense of national identity, and were supposed to describe the “Japanese” through special emphasis on certain cultural peculiarities, ranging from proprietorship of material culture to specific linguistic, artistic, religious, and social aspects (McVeigh, 2003).

A salient feature of any nation-oriented discourse is the connection between the idea of race and culture uniqueness in the perception of national identity and the use of various symbols in order to enhance a sense of national unity, as well as to strengthen people’s cultural identity. In Japan, the image of a homogeneous Japanese population represented the main result of this process. The image of the Japanese as “homogenous people” (tanitsu minzoku), for example, was based on the idea that Japanese thinking and behaviors are unique and linked to each other and that non-Japanese cannot understand them. The term “culture,” in particular, was the mostly used to link art, citizenship, ethnicity, and race with the “Japanese.” Various images included pottery arts, paintings, wood-block prints, calligraphy, flower arrangement, tea ceremony, and theater forms such as noh, kabuki, and bunraku. These constituted the rich variety of folklore and cultural properties referred to as dentō geijutsu (traditional art), dentō geinō (traditional entertainment), or dentō bunka (traditional culture). In this context, the bunka no jidai (age of culture) program organized by the government represented an important institutional strategy. In particular, “freezing” national identity and history into cultural prototypes was one of the strategies adopted in this regard by the central and local governments in a variety of contexts, such as tourism and commodities production, as well as projects of “hometown making” (furusato-zukuri) and local programs concerned with the diffusion of Japanese tradition.

In this context, the ACA was established with the principal aim of promoting and disseminating different aspects of culture, as well as preserving cultural properties and historical sites. It manages six major areas: religious affairs, copyright, language, arts, international exchange, and protection of cultural assets. There are two basic types of funding provided by the ACA: the first aims to encourage artistic culture through various activities, preservation of National Treasures and Important Cultural Properties, and various transmissions of traditional entertainment; the second type is the provision of cultural facilities (the National Theatre, Second National Theatre, facilities for national culture, and preservation of local cultural assets) (McVeigh, 2003: 166–167). The ACA promotes projects to increase the “Power of Culture” in each region and to “invigorate Japanese society as a whole.” These projects have drawn much attention for connecting people to culture, as well as for strengthening tourism and economic activities in each region.

According to the ACA, modernization and industrialization have resulted in the loss of many opportunities for Japanese people to be in contact with the culture of everyday life. It is suggested that the re-appropriation of these traditional habits, in particular through the involvement of children, might help the Japanese re-establish contact with their “culture” and strengthen the interest in cultural activities at the regional level for the construction of a common identity as Japanese. For this purpose, the Program for the Diffusion of Culture of Everyday Life (Program for Parents’ and Children’s Traditional Culture Classes) was implemented between 2009 and 2010 to target both children and their families. Six fields of intervention were identified: go board (igo), Japanese chess (shogi), flower arrangement (kadō), tea ceremony (sadō), Japanese clothing—kimono (wasō), and traditional incense smelling ceremony (kōdō). The ACA supports volunteers and local and regional programs concerning the promotion of these traditional arts for these programs can

… offer the opportunity to touch and be in contact directly with Japanese culture of everyday life, through the establishment of appropriate institution such as schools, cultural institutions and community centers, made for children and students of elementary, middle and high schools, secondary education schools and special aid schools, as well as the parents.² (Nihongo kyouiku kenkyuu itaku, 2011: 11)

Various initiatives dedicated specifically to children are organized under the Student Development Program through Culture and the Arts. These programs have been implemented for promoting activities enabling children to experience arts and culture for helping

… children experience and learn about traditional Japanese culture, as well as have thrilling experiences and grow into cultured, sensitive adults through personal encounters with authentic culture and the arts, and participation in creative activities. (ACA, 2014: 19)

Some of these programs offer an opportunity to come into contact with stage arts, as well as to participate in studio classes and workshops taught by artistic groups. The program known as Traditional Art Experience Program for Parents and Children, for example,

… shares the traditional culture derived from history and tradition throughout Japan and carefully preserved and passed on through generations. It also shares the lifestyle and culture cherished and established in the lives of Japanese people, and ensures that children are exposed to and experience this traditional culture and this lifestyle and culture to cultivate rich humanity within them. (ACA, 2016: 25)

All these programs are viewed by the ACA as a way to provide opportunities for children “who will lead the next generation,” to experience folk performing arts, craft techniques, traditional Japanese dance, and other forms of traditional culture. In this regard, various educational and school activities are organized in support of a variety of organizations all over the country, including workshops at primary and secondary schools, and traditional performances, such as kabuki, noh, and ningyo joruri (puppet theater). Individuals or small groups of artists are selected by each school in order to teach music, popular entertainment, literature, drama, art, dance, and various traditional arts.

Although ethnic diversity in Japan is not new, the recent immigration of an increasing number of newcomers has particularly modified the demographic profile of the country.³ As a result, throughout the past few decades, “multiculturalism” (tabunka kyosei, literally “many cultures living together”) has represented another important keyword in media, policies, and statistics and has led to an increasing institutional interest in minority cultural promotion, international exchange, as well as ethnic and human rights–based educational programs (Cangià, 2013b; Hankins, 2012). However, despite the growing awareness of ethnic and social diversity in Japan, commonplace representations of “otherness” at the public and institutional levels describe minority groups as separate from a presumed homogeneous “majority,” the “Japanese.” In this context, different forms of initiatives aiming at promoting “minority” cultures (e.g. Ainu, Okinawan) have increased. At the same time, the ACA also started to pay a special attention on the promotion of the Ainu culture. In line with the 1997 Law for the Promotion of the Ainu Culture and for the Dissemination and Advocacy for the Traditions of the Ainu and the Ainu Culture, the ACA aims to promote Ainu culture through various activities engaging children.

All these programs for children share a similar view concerning the role played by childhood in the promotion of Japanese culture, as well as in the education about cultural diversity. Children are regarded as “future bearers of Japan’s traditional culture” and are supposed to be “exposed to, get into contact with, and learn, authentic culture,” as well as to “grow into cultured, sensitive adults,” so as to “pass” this to next generations. On the contrary, as the following discussion illustrates, buraku networks recognize children as political agents, who are able to construct alternative views and new meanings on both minority and majority cultural identities.

The buraku issue and the Dōwa education

Despite the abolition of the status system in 1871, and the implementation of Dōwa Special Measures in the late 1960s, buraku people still experience various forms of discrimination. This is most salient in terms of access to education and housing, discriminatory messages on the web, as well as background investigations conducted by private agencies at times of employment and marriage. External determination of “buraku origin” is currently based on one’s birth, former or current residence in a buraku district, or on one’s engagement in the buraku industries. However, the buraku is a heterogeneous construct including a variety of individuals of different cultural and social backgrounds (Kawamoto, 1991; Weiner, 2008).

One of the special measures implemented for solving the buraku issue is the so-called Dōwa Education, referring to those educational activities organized both by the government and the buraku movement with the aim of addressing buraku and other forms of discrimination (Hawkins, 1983). The difference between the government and the movement, however, lies in the strategies employed for the resolution of this issue. For the government, the Dōwa education should solve existing discrimination through the improvement of educational facilities and additional teachers, support for community activities, and the provision of special financial aid and special curriculum materials about buraku history (Hirasawa and Nabeshima, 1995). On the contrary, for the buraku movement, the Dōwa education should include a set of educational strategies mostly aimed at sensitizing the whole society, at developing learning capacities of buraku children, as well as at engaging buraku communities in setting school agendas (Hirasawa and Nabeshima, 1995). More specifically, they state that Dōwa education should include

… 1) effective methods to improve Buraku children’s sense of pride and self-esteem; 2) approaches to motivate them to challenge the limit of their potential so they can participate in a wider world of opportunities; 3) stimulating ways to encourage non-Buraku children to think of Buraku and human rights issues not just as others’ business but as important matters to help enrich their mind, perspective and interpersonal sensitivities, and 4) effective curricula to educate a human rights-conscious generation of youngsters. (Hirasawa and Nabeshima, 1995: 12)

The notion of “the buraku culture” (buraku no bunka), in this context, was introduced by the BLL in the postwar period (Kawamoto, 2005) and plays a significant role in the political vernacular of the buraku movement. This notion in particular was mobilized in various local and grassroots initiatives in order to reformulate new meanings of “the buraku identity” on the basis of the valuable role played by buraku industries (e.g. leather-working) in developing Japanese culture (e.g. taiko drums) (Cangià, 2013a).

Childhood at work: Kinegawa community activism

An example of the implementation of the Dōwa education is the community project in Kinegawa and its surroundings (Iwata, 2003). Kinegawa (today known as Higashi Sumida) is an important pig leather, grease, and soap industrial area located in the east of Sumida Ward (Tokyo). The district was designated as a buraku on the occasion of the implementation of urbanization policies at the end of the 19th century, when leather factories and workers were relocated from Asakusa to Arakawa and Higashi Sumida suburban areas. Throughout the 20th century, the immigration of newcomers and the emigration of buraku residents further modified the demographic profile of this district. Currently, people living in Higashi Sumida include Chinese, South Asian (Filipinos, Thai, Malaysian, and Bangladeshis), Africans, and Japanese. The Korean community is an important part of the surrounding context and participates in many local activities, while other Japanese individuals commute from various parts of the city to work in the industrial area (Cangià, 2013b).

Kinegawa community activism is mainly based on the memories of the former Kinegawa Elementary School, which was opened in the district in 1936 and has been operating as a Dōwa education institute since 2003. It was closed as a result of increasing discriminatory attacks against the “children of Kinegawa” and of the decreasing number of children enrolled in the school to avoid identification as buraku people. After the school’s closure, teachers and part of the community decided to maintain the memory of the school by founding the Archives Kinegawa Museum on the ground floor of the building. The museum exhibits the history of the district and Kinegawa educational project and includes leather tanning machinery, various leather-made artifacts, pictures of workers in factories and children crafting leather objects, as well as some collections of children’s written essays (Cangià, 2012).

The community project in Kinegawa also includes the Sumida Kodomokai organization and school activities, which are intended for children of various backgrounds. These are framed within the context of the Dōwa Education, more specifically within the Kaiho Kodomo-kai (the BLL children’s liberation organizations). Sumida Kodomokai is one of the children’s organizations established by the BLL throughout the country to involve communities in addressing discrimination issues. In Kinegawa, children⁴ and their families gather on Saturdays in the BLL’s building located in the nearby district and meet with educators and activists to cook, draw, play, craft small items, visit factories, and discuss various topics. These activities include tsuzurikata (writing about life) and monozukuri (crafting objects) methods, as well as other initiatives based on the use of surrounding facilities and the involvement of local communities. For example, often children visit leather factories and experience the practice of leather production. At other times, they write about their daily life in their notebooks, to which teachers respond with written comments and, when necessary, direct the topic of the essay in order to stimulate children to further reflect about aspects that seem to matter to them. Some teachers are non-buraku Japanese and are hence required to get to know the local environment, visit, and establish relationships with families in order to understand their pupils’ experiences. In the past, the reality of Kinegawa as a buraku ghetto was a topic that required specific attention. Currently, teachers consider a focus on the reality of Kinegawa as a top priority of their educational project in order to foster children’s relationship with the neighborhood and to strengthen their pride about the buraku industries in the district. One of the founder of the museum in Kinegawa and organizers of children activities so explains:

I was not completely aware of the degree of discrimination these children faced. I realized as soon as I started to work outside the class and visit parents and families to talk about their personal lives. However, an important testimony came from children, thanks to the compositions they had to write as homework. They were asked to write about their lives, about their neighborhood and a lot of things came out, about the neighborhood, the bad streets and the grey atmosphere, or also about other children and the discrimination towards their parents’ work. (From the interview conducted in Kinegawa)

Children’s experiences collected through tsuzurikata method are hence a valuable source for educators and activists and serve to enhance their knowledge about the locality, to establish a trust-based relation with children, as well as to better understand children’s perspectives on the local environment (Cangià, 2013b). Children are so provided with an opportunity to reflect about the culture of leather-work and other activities implemented in the neighborhood. Children’s essays were gathered in two collections—Kinegawa Topography (1964–1965) and Children of Kinegawa (1959–2003)—and displayed in the last section of the museum as historical documentation. In Kinegawa Topography (1964–1965), for example, children were asked to redesign their hometowns through imagination and to share their personal opinions on how to make the area a nicer place to live:

Through these compositions we wish children could understand how their families, their school and friends are precious and irreplaceable. We wish they could have fun, and their lives become better and nicer. We wish fathers and mothers, by reading these, could make the place better and enrich their lives. (Kinegawa Topography: 4)

Children’s imagery of the surrounding environment is one of the priorities of buraku activism. Their experiences influence the organization of the initiatives in the community, which, in turn, provide children with an opportunity to strengthen their relationship with the locality, to know more about buraku industries, in particular about the leather-work. Children participate actively not only by sharing their perspectives but also by visiting tanneries, crafting small leather-items themselves, and re-imagining the locality of a buraku through alternative meanings.

The social context in which children interact, in particular the increasing number of other nationalities in the neighborhood, leads the activists to widen the scope of their political agenda: the “buraku culture” does not pertain to a fixed cultural identity, but serves as semantic zone for the encounter of various individuals who navigate the district (Cangià, 2013b). As part of the educational project, teachers and activists stress the usefulness of leather-made objects in everybody’s daily life, their social biography, and the role of these objects in “Japanese history.” Children, in turn, when writing or talking about their neighborhood and their parents’ work, put particular emphasis on the role played by leather-working and leather objects in “Japanese society” (Cangià, 2012).

Children’s use of different materials, their relationship with the locality, as well as their actual experiences of community life are some of the main resources used in Kinegawa in order to revitalize the neighborhood and to place the buraku issue in new and alternative frameworks. One of the most important frameworks is the “Japanese culture.” In particular, the leather-working, from being a discriminated-against activity, is reframed—through children’s active participation, their experience, and sensitivity—within the notions of “Japanese culture,” “Japanese society,” and “Japanese history.”

Conclusion

The article has discussed the different projects related to the participation of children in “majority” and “minority” contexts. In Japan, in the case of cultural nationalism and buraku minority activism, it noted how children’s role varies. These meanings ascribed to them can be differently framed in collective political projects aimed at either maintaining (like in the case of the ACA) or transforming (like in the case of the buraku activism) social and cultural identities. The definition of children’s role in society depends on the impact of these different strategies, as well as on the specific social position of those people who participate in the various cultural activities. Whereas the ACA looks at children as mere bearers of adults’ cultural values, who basically carry on fixed cultural meanings, the buraku activists in Kinegawa seem to consider children as “contemporaries of adults” who can play a strong role in the movement’s political project. “Childhood” seems here to work as a significant opportunity for widening participation in the definition of cultural identities, wherein children participate not as mere receivers of a set of cultural and ethnic-like features delivered by adults. Rather, they are participants in the making of identity, history, and locality. “Culture” is viewed here not as a transferrable product to be preserved through education and through cultural performance but an ongoing process where boundaries between groups can be negotiated and transformed (Cangià, 2013b).

In Kinegawa, in particular, despite the heterogeneity of the numerous activities implemented, most of the initiatives provide opportunities for new readings and a “transcultural” language of culture and identity, through the simultaneous emphasis on local, national, ethnic, or universal principles (e.g. everyday life, skills, industries, hometown, and human rights). The practice of leather-work is hence reframed within “national” images such as taiko drums, traditional artistic techniques, ancient manufactures, and handiworks (e.g. tabi, zori, drums, and armor), which make the “buraku” more similar to the “Japanese.” Buraku practices are valued and participated in via children’s personal experience. This educational strategy partly recalls the ACA’s programs aimed at offering the opportunity to be in contact with the “culture of everyday life.” It also calls to mind the ACA’s wish to bring “the key industries of Japan” to life, to preserve and transmit traditional arts. In both cases, the aim seems to be reconstructing the locality, as well as helping children experience tradition through direct contact with the local environment. In the case of the ACA, the emphasis placed on “Japanese culture” and children’s role in the promotion of tradition seems to lead to an exclusive definition of cultural identity (the “Japanese culture” for the “Japanese” to be preserved and passed along). On the contrary, in Kinegawa, the rediscovery of “Japanese culture” seems to be widened as an inclusive process in which “buraku culture” also finds its space. Here, everybody, including and especially children, can play with one’s own social and cultural identity, enjoy tradition, and participate in the making of culture. The different discourses about “culture” in these contexts bring different meanings relating to “childhood” and to children’s role in political action. On one hand, childhood can be viewed as a political project of transmission of defined cultural values and “bright” group boundaries (Alba, 2005); on the other, childhood becomes that very occasion for social change, wherein group boundaries can be challenged and negotiated.

As a result, educational projects can be differently conceived. Whereas in the first case education works as the means to pass a set of pre-given values, in the case of Kinegawa, education can also serve to challenge existing socio-cultural meanings. Educational projects in the latter case do not rely on the mere presence of an artist, or a performer of a certain cultural practice, but requires the active participation of children in the “crafting” of culture that looks to the future. The idea of child as a social agent is in this case an important political construct, “for developing new ways of seeing the world—that is, the world in which childhood continues to become a meaningful part” (Jenks, 2004: 6).

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author biography

Flavia Cangià is a Post Doc Research Fellow at the Institute of Psychology and Education, University of Neuchâtel (Switzerland) collaborating on a project on mobile professionals’ families as part of the National Center of Competence in Research (NCCR) – On the Move. Her research interests include social categorization, emotions, ethnicity, migration, mobility, complexity, children, and youths.

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