IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cog/socinc/v10y2022i4p53-62.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Court Cases on Poor Children’s Access to Normalcy

Author

Listed:
  • Elisabet Näsman

    (Department of Sociology, Uppsala University, Sweden)

  • Stina Fernqvist

    (Department of Sociology, Uppsala University, Sweden)

Abstract

Poverty in childhood is associated with an increased risk of being marginalised and socially excluded, which is also the case in the Swedish welfare state. Poor parents often strive for their children to fit in among same‐aged children, which is difficult for the poorest to accomplish. As the last resort for the poor, the welfare state offers the opportunity to apply for financial aid, but applications may be rejected. Parents can then appeal the rejections to an administrative court. In these decisions, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child could be applied or referred to. The convention has been incorporated into Swedish law since 2020. This article is grounded in childhood sociology and aims to show how poor children, their needs, and rights are processed in the legal system, which sets the framework for the children’s access to material conditions needed for inclusion in a welfare state such as Sweden. The presentation is based on a qualitative content analysis of administrative court records concerning financial aid appeals. The results show that the appeal process confirms the adult orientation of financial aid and that a child rights perspective is, with few exceptions, missing in these records. When children are mentioned, a care perspective dominates and their right to participation is neglected.

Suggested Citation

  • Elisabet Näsman & Stina Fernqvist, 2022. "Court Cases on Poor Children’s Access to Normalcy," Social Inclusion, Cogitatio Press, vol. 10(4), pages 53-62.
    • Handle: RePEc:cog:socinc:v:10:y:2022:i:4:p:53-62
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/socialinclusion/article/view/5325
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Carina Mood & Jan O. Jonsson, 2016. "Trends in Child Poverty in Sweden: Parental and Child Reports," Child Indicators Research, Springer;The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI), vol. 9(3), pages 825-854, September.
    2. Roger A. Hart, 1992. "Children's Participation: From tokenism to citizenship," Papers inness92/6, Innocenti Essay.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Anita Borch & Kirsi Laitala, 2022. "New Approaches to the Study of Social Inclusion of Poor Children and Youth," Social Inclusion, Cogitatio Press, vol. 10(4), pages 1-3.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mona Treude & Ralf Schüle & Hans Haake, 2022. "Smart Sustainable Cities—Case Study Südwestfalen Germany," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(10), pages 1-16, May.
    2. Richard Peter Bailey & Suria Angit, 2022. "Conceptualising Inclusion and Participation in the Promotion of Healthy Lifestyles," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(16), pages 1-14, August.
    3. Richard Maclure, 2017. "Youth Reflexivity as Participatory Research in Senegal: A Field Study of Reciprocal Learning and Incremental Transformations," Social Inclusion, Cogitatio Press, vol. 5(3), pages 251-261.
    4. Gazit, Matan & Perry-Hazan, Lotem, 2020. "Disadvantaged youth’s participation in collective decision making," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 110(C).
    5. Duramy, Benedetta Faedi & Gal, Tali, 2020. "Understanding and implementing child participation: Lessons from the Global South," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 119(C).
    6. Matthew Morton & Paul Montgomery, 2010. "PROTOCOL: Youth empowerment programs for improving self‐efficacy and self‐esteem of adolescents," Campbell Systematic Reviews, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 6(1), pages 1-38.
    7. Nir, Tal & Perry-Hazan, Lotem, 2016. "The framed right to participate in municipal youth councils and its educational impact," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 174-183.
    8. Harriet Thew & Lucie Middlemiss & Jouni Paavola, 2022. "“You Need a Month’s Holiday Just to Get over It!” Exploring Young People’s Lived Experiences of the UN Climate Change Negotiations," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(7), pages 1-21, April.
    9. Marta Estellés & Francisco José Amo & Jesús Romero, 2021. "The Consensus on Citizenship Education Purposes in Teacher Education," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 10(5), pages 1-19, May.
    10. Sollis, Kate & Yap, Mandy & Campbell, Paul & Biddle, Nicholas, 2022. "Conceptualisations of wellbeing and quality of life: A systematic review of participatory studies," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 160(C).
    11. Jasper Dhoore & Bram Spruyt & Jessy Siongers, 2024. "Locked Down: The Gendered Impact of Social Support on Children’s Well-Being Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic," Child Indicators Research, Springer;The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI), vol. 17(1), pages 367-394, February.
    12. Ruff, Saralyn C. & Harrison, Kristi, 2020. "“Ask Me What I Want”: Community-based participatory research to explore transition-age foster Youth’s use of support services," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 108(C).
    13. Marcus Bhargava & Lee Jerome, 2020. "Training Teachers for and through Citizenship: Learning from Citizenship Experiences," Societies, MDPI, vol. 10(2), pages 1-12, April.
    14. Perry-Hazan, Lotem, 2016. "Children's participation in national policymaking: “You're so adorable, adorable, adorable! I'm speechless; so much fun!”," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 105-113.
    15. van Bijleveld, G.G. & Dedding, C.W.M. & Bunders-Aelen, J.F.G., 2014. "Seeing eye to eye or not? Young people's and child protection workers' perspectives on children's participation within the Dutch child protection and welfare services," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 47(P3), pages 253-259.
    16. Harder, Annemiek T. & Mann-Feder, Varda & Oterholm, Inger & Refaeli, Tehila, 2020. "Supporting transitions to adulthood for youth leaving care: Consensus based principles," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 116(C).
    17. Kristi Paron, 2024. "Exploring Child-Patient Autonomy: Findings from an Ethnographic Study of Clinic Visits by Children," Child Indicators Research, Springer;The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI), vol. 17(1), pages 99-121, February.
    18. Balsells, M. Ángeles & Fuentes-Peláez, Nuria & Pastor, Crescencia, 2017. "Listening to the voices of children in decision-making: A challenge for the child protection system in Spain," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 418-425.
    19. Daphna Gross-Manos & Hanita Kosher & Asher Ben-Arieh, 2021. "Research with Children: Lessons Learned from the International Survey of Children’s Wellbeing," Child Indicators Research, Springer;The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI), vol. 14(5), pages 2097-2118, October.
    20. Helena Neves de Almeida, 2022. "Critical Reflections Concerning the Concept of Participation in Social Intervention and Research," Humanities Today: Proceedings Articles, Revistia Research and Publishing, vol. 1, July -Dec.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cog:socinc:v:10:y:2022:i:4:p:53-62. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: António Vieira (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.