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Children and Participation: Mapping Social Inequalities within Concepts of Well-Being in Qualitative Research

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Abstract

From the perspective of children, the ability to participate in social life is closely linked to well-being. In the context of the CUWB study we collected qualitative data on concepts of children’s well-being. Our goal in this contribution is to use these data to reconstruct the significance of social participation and to show methodologically the relevance for well-being of social inequalities and power systems established through generation, class, gender, race and body. In our methodological approach, we focus on case studies and will use two examples to show how specific concepts of well-being are linked to participation. Using the issue of participation, we want to illuminate how social inequalities are inscribed in concepts of well-being. We argue that it is not sufficient to reconstruct children’s subjective perspectives on well-being. Instead, our reconstructions show how social conditions are internalized so that the ideas, dreams and wishes of an individual reflect the constraints of social contexts and structures. This also means that such constraints need to be considered in methodology: well-being can be analyzed systematically only in the interplay of subjective and objective conditions.

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Notes

  1. The term participation is broad and includes a range of different connotations. We use the term to refer to “the manner in which individuals or social groups can express their free will, make decisions, or influence decisions [or rather] […] participation […] as taking action at all conceivable opportunities and in all societal realms […]” (Liebel 2009).

  2. The concept of an allday school is (perhaps) specific to the German context. Nevertheless it is important to mention as allday schools have been increasingly established in the aftermath of PISA 2001 showing that in the German school system inequality is reproduced to a great extend. Allday school – enabling children to do their homework at school and therefore being helped by professionals – ground on the idea to reduce social inequalities created in the system, for example with instead of parents doing homework with their children at home and with that privileging those children whose parents can fufill this task better than other (lower educated) parents.

  3. The Tafel is a non-profit organization in Germany that collects food and distributes it to the socially and economically disadvantaged.

  4. This intersectional analysis views social inequality as constituted simultaneously on three levels: a micro-level of socially constructed identities, a meso-level of symbolic representations, and a macro-level of societal structures. Thus, an intersectional analysis of inequality needs to take into account categories of difference at each level as well as their interplay/interwovenness across levels (Winker and Degele 2009, p. 23ff).

  5. Names and locations have been anonymized.

  6. Class in Boudieu’s (1984) understanding becomes relevant as (lack of) symbolic capital (the family as strong symbolic capital, see Alanen 2014) and as lack of socioeconomic capital.

  7. Gender becomes relevant through the power relation grounded by Sexism: the older boy abusing the younger boy sexually and the absence or dysfunction of regulations to prevent a abuse.

  8. “Lucas’s case is peculiar as the generational order has an institutional character which would be expected to lead to twofold inequalities both within the institution, and in a general society.” (comment of our reviewer): It is actually true that this is not reflected well in our article and this is mainly due to the analytical incompleteness of the analysis presented here. We have shown in our article only the first four steps of the intersectional analysis. Following the analysis of Winker and Degele (2009) the next four steps would work at bringing in class (with respect to Lukas) which would have (as our reviewer commented again) “to reveal participatory process of an institutionalized child”. For the helpful comments on this deficit of our article we would like to thank the relevant reviewer.

  9. In the meaning of: “…he has not yet found anybody with whom he gets along reasonably well” …and again it is about “fitting in” from our perspective.

  10. See reference six.

  11. … in the meaning of „coping with life“.

  12. We do understand „actor“in the meaning of “participants of social practices” (See Bollig and Kelle, 2014).

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  1. Faculty I -Education and Society Science, University of Vechta, Vechta, Germany

    Christine Hunner-Kreisel & Stella März

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  1. Christine Hunner-Kreisel
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Correspondence to Christine Hunner-Kreisel.

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Hunner-Kreisel, C., März, S. Children and Participation: Mapping Social Inequalities within Concepts of Well-Being in Qualitative Research. Child Ind Res 12, 425–442 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12187-018-9598-4

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