Handbook of Children’s Risk, Vulnerability and Quality of Life: An Introduction

Abstract

During the last few years there has been a growing interest within the international community in research and policies related to well-being and the experienced quality of life of children. This has resulted in an increased number of publications and many international research projects. Despite these, few studies have addressed the link between well-being, risk, and states of vulnerability in children’s lives across the world. This is an emerging area of interest and there are many gaps in the existing knowledge.

New approaches placing children as main voices, generate new relationships between concepts, and value different types of methods to study children’s well-being. In addition, the development of international research networks have facilitated comparisons and analyses between countries, contexts, and diverse cultures.

This handbook brings together a wide range of perspectives from established experts and emerging scholars, who represent the five continents and a very wide range of cultural contexts, which encourages different ways of knowing and research, trying to give place to different voices and generating questions.

It covers theoretical, empirical, political, and practice-based contributions. The incorporation of multidisciplinary and empirical contributions was favoured using qualitative, quantitative and/or mixed methods approaches. We hope that the approach taken in this handbook became a call that children’s issues should be prioritized to build a safer, more just, and more prosperous world for all people.