Beyond adultcentrism: intergenerational action in defense of children and adolescent’s rights

Abstract

This article discusses Latin American perspectives on children and youth participation in defense of their rights in intergenerational spaces. The text begins by presenting a conceptual analysis focusing on recent trends in the region’s academic literature, followed by empirical research in which young and adult counselors reflect on their experiences working in one of the Children’s Rights Councils in Brazil. The analysis highlights three concepts that often appear in the Latin American bibliographic corpus on the field: protagonism, citizen participation and adult-centrism, as well as their uses by young counselors. The article presents a critical and innovative perspective by demonstrating that despite adult-centrism highlighted in Latin American research, the protagonic role of young activists has the potential to destabilize unequal intergenerational power relations in public decision-making arenas and to reshape these relations in more equal terms.