Solving the Paradox: The Social Semantics of Children’s Right of Self-Determination

Centred on a critical examination of the United Nations Conventions on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC, 1989), this article proposes an approach to children’s right of self-determination as social semantics, to illuminate the dynamic and paradoxical coupling within discourses on childhood between a fundamental social process, the reproduction of generational order, and a fundamental social institution, human rights as codified in European modernity.

The article presents the result of a three-stages study, articulated in: a systematic review of literature around the theme of children’s right of self-determination; a discussion of children’s right of self-determination as social semantics; the use of Early Childhood Education as a significant case-study to observe the development of children’s self-determination as a tenet of the mainstream semantics of childhood in society. It is argued that the semantics of children’s right of self-determination: 1) describes a paradoxical coexistence between intergenerational order and human rights; 2) is capable of maintain its viability as a cultural form because it is coupled with another semantic distinction, between human rights and personal rights.

It is hoped that the scholarly debate will benefit from the contribution of an article exploring the intersection between social ontology of childhood and children’s right of self-determination.