In collaboration with the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Yvan Droz, Senior Lecturer in Anthropology and Sociology of Developent at the Graduate Institute, and Adjunct Professor at the Department of Historical Sciences (the Faculty of Arts and Human Sciences) at Université Laval, co-leads an SNSF-funded three-year project entitled “Living Rights in Translation: An Interdisciplinary Approach of Working Children’s Rights”. He gives us more details about this study and his involvement with UNIGE.
What is the purpose of your research?
It aims to study the trajectories of local conceptualisations of children’s rights within a larger network that brings together child rights actors and discourses on children’s rights. Two empirical studies on children’s understandings of their rights and their translations are underway, one in Dakar and the other on the multisite international network of children’s activists. They explore the concepts of living rights, social justice and translations. This original conceptual framework helps to better understand the complex ways in which children’s rights come into play in international development and vis-à-vis local moralities or children ethos. In order to follow the trajectories of children’s local opinions and understanding of their rights, the project concentrates on working children’s organisations and their interactions with local and global actors. We focus on the claim to recognise children’s right to work in dignity. Nicolas Mabillard studies the moral foundations of working children’s local practices in Dakar. Edward van Daalen investigates how children’s claims have had an impact on, or have been impacted by, other actors and discourses in the child labour transnational policymaking network, in which working children have had minor access.
In what ways is your research original?
It pays particular attention to the interstitial space between local perspectives and the views of cosmopolite international organisations, where dominant child labour regulations and policies are designed and gain official status. We will hold an interdisciplinary dialogue on the findings of the two studies (the realities of child work in Dakar and the international claim to control the work of children). Our main questions are: How do children’s perspectives on their rights (living rights) circulate in transnational realms? In what way do these perspectives interact with possibly competing perspectives upheld by transnational actors? How can insights into these interactions enrich our understanding of the continuum between local and international translations of children’s rights?
The study is composed of three parts: (1) the empirical study of the opinion of working children and their organisations; (2) the empirical study of discourses on working children’s right to work in dignity; and (3) a theoretical study of the translation of children's perspectives on their rights. It is the project’s contention that the combined insights derived from these three interrelated parts will enable us to deepen our empirical and theoretical knowledge on how children’s conceptualisations of their rights develop in interaction within a larger web of local and global actors and the discourses they produce.
You work in close collaboration with colleagues from UNIGE.
Yes indeed. I was a member of the steering committee of Professor Karl Hanson’s previous research project on Living Rights (2010–2012), and we have received a new funding from 2015 up to 2018 together with Professor Frédéric Darbellay, of the University of Geneva’s newly established Centre for Children’s Rights Studies. We also teach together in the Master of Advanced Studies in Children’s Rights (MCR) in Sion, at UNIGE’s Valais Campus. The MCR is a part-time international and interdisciplinary postgraduate programme on children’s rights, which takes place over a two-year period. Lastly, I co-supervise two theses on children’s rights at UNIGE. We should meet again in 2018 to speak about the outcomes of all these endeavours!