Paper short abstract:

Aiming to unsettle the way universal ideas of rights are employed in child protection work addressing exploitation in West Africa, this paper explores how adolescents think about care networks stretched to several locations, the claims they feel entitled to make and the obligations they try to meet.

Paper long abstract:

This paper problematises the way in which children's individual rights as globally applicable qualities are given priority in advocacy and child protection work without paying sufficient attention to children's perspectives on their own situation and opportunities. The starting point for the discussion is the way in which notions of care are often tied to one location and conceptualised as a unidirectional provision of basic needs, socialisation and emotional attention from parents to children not only in the more recent rights-based discourses but also in anthropological representations. By looking at relationships between children and adults through the lens of intergenerational contracts, I interrogate how adolescents think about care, what kinds of claims they feel entitled to make and what kinds of obligations they try to meet.

Drawing on empirical material from a context of high mobility of both adults and children, and in particular on a study of adolescents' independent migration within Burkina Faso that I undertook in 2005, I argue that networks of care are stretched to several locations reflecting the multiple locations of parents, guardians, children and children's siblings. Moreover, I argue that individuals are able to assert different sets of claims within these networks depending on entitlements linked with their biological and social relationships, and on the economic standing of various members of the network. Based on this empirical exploration of adolescents' perceptions of care, I will raise a set of theoretical questions that aim to unsettle universal ideas of rights such as those employed in child protection work addressing the exploitation of children in West Africa while still giving emphasis to the individual and thus to children as an analytical category and as actors.