Global Perspectives on Children's Independent Mobility: A Socio-Cultural Comparison and Theoretical Discussion of Children's Lives in Four Countries in Asia and Africa

Abstract

The article provides a comparative analysis of children's independent mobility in four countries – South Africa, Tanzania, Japan and Australia. The authors discuss key findings across the four study sites and illustrate the contextually bound nuances connected to the data at the community level. The data illustrate that while Japanese children have the most independence generally, Japanese children who live in a small town outside of a main city centre have significantly lower mobility than their city counterparts, and levels of car use for driving children to school are similar to levels in Australia. The results also reveal that while children in South Africa generally look to be more independent, have fewer restrictions and are accompanied less by parents than children in Australia (which appears to have the highest rate of accompaniment), the community-wide data illustrate that children living in the high-income city communities have the least amount of independence of all sites in the four countries, with travel to school by car as high as 87%. Additionally, the research illustrates that age is not a clear determinant of a growing increase in independence and mobility in communities. An inspection of the data reveals possibilities for considering the heterogeneous perspective of childhood where the intersection of children's locales and how children traverse them is as significant as the aggregated data that provide universal notions of the childhood experience. The final discussions provide some opportunities to consider Prout's introduction of a life course approach for reconceptualising children and childhood, which he believes allows for a multiplicity and complexity of childhoods. This concept is seen to be helpful when considering how to include global perspectives in children's independent mobility without universalising children's life experience.