No. 20 (11): Ethnographies on and with children and youths in educational contexts. January-June 2020

Some ethnographic research conducted in the last 80 years shows that the participation of children and youths in field work is key to making new findings in social research in educational contexts. In the last 40 years, a number of circumstantial and contextual political, economic, legal, social and ethical elements have combined in complex ways and generated a growing and unprecedented trend in ethnographic research of and about children and youths. This trend has been part of a global movement of affirmation of the rights of children and youths, which has found expression in social research through debates on the issue of the lack of recognition of their role as social actors with agency, the difficulty to distinguish childhood and youth as a multiple and diverse complexity, the minimization of analytic categories such as age and generation, and the underestimation of children and youth as active individuals in the processes of production and social reproduction, among others.

Strategies to counter the ways to silence children and youths have multiplied in social research in different disciplines and paradigms, which have generally coincided in considering them active subjects in socialization processes “discovering that they can teach ‘things’” to adults. There is also a degree of consensus around the idea that ethnography, as a research approach, is particularly appropriate to incorporate children and youths by giving them a voice and participation in the processes of production of knowledge, just like other interlocutors.

Issue Coordinator: Diana Milstein