Browsing by Subject "kansalaisuus"

My master's thesis is a study of citizenship and its ideals in disability policy from the perspective of critical ability studies. The main focus of ability studies is to analyze ableism and how it produces ideals of perfect humanness. Therefore, from the perspective of ableism these ideals produce disability and impairments as something intolerable as well as inherently and ontologically negative. My study focused on the disability policy paradigm as it is after the convention on the rights of persons with disabilities from the year 2006. The disability policy paradigm emphasizes both the rights of people with disabilities to full citizenship and their participation in society. The study data included 20 documents from European, national and municipal disability policies, released from 2006 onwards. In this study I explored how ableism defines the construction of full citizenship and how ableism affects individual's possibilities to participate as citizen according to the current disability policy. As my research method, I applied interpretative reading style based on the New Rhetoric. In the current disability policy paradigm the ideal of full citizenship is based on individualistic and neoliberalistic views, which emphasize self-mastery and independence. This ideal is impossible for people with disabilities because self-mastery and independence are defined as autonomy from other people and social services. Moreover, falling short from the ideal is located in ontologically negative space. Subsequently the bodies with impairments are always seen as imperfect and defective as well as economically burdening. Emphasizing the physical imperfectness of individuals defines their possibilities to participate in society because this participation is emulating the ideal. Also, the individuals with disabilities are forced to repeat their imperfectness in order to obtain social services, which enable participation. Ontological discrimination of people with disabilities is evident in the disability policy, even though it contradicts the aims of the policy.

This thesis examines children’s citizenship in recent empirical research in the field of child-hood studies. The thesis will examine the questions, themes and theoretical approaches that have framed the studies of children’s citizenship. Childhood studies is a multidisciplinary field and the research concerning children’s citizenship is embedded within multifaceted social and political contexts. Children’s relationship with the citizenship is unsettled. Children are being given many rights, responsibilities and possibilities to participate but at the same time they are excluded from citizenship. Children’s place as becoming citizens has been persistent in societies where especially political citizenship remains a field fully open only for adults. This under-standing frames the recent research of children’s citizenship. The study data consists of 17 research articles that are examining children’s citizenship through empirical data. These articles were reviewed and analysed applying narrative analysis. The study data shows that children’s citizenship is constructed in social, political and historical contexts. Political and legislative structures are the basis of children’s social participation. In in-stitutionalised settings, children’s participation is enabled in participatory activities. These par-ticipatory settings facilitate children’s agency and advocacy but also demonstrate some re-strictions. The approaches of lived citizenship have opened new interpretations of the ways that children enact citizenship. The studied articles show that citizenship is a concept that illumi-nates the aspects of the relationship between children and adults and may generate some under-standing of ethical encounters. Examining the marginal positions of citizenship is helpful in discussing children’s place in society. Citizenship as a concept unfolds the different aspects of inclusion and exclusion in society.

Objectives. Participation has been studied extensively in the recent years, and its relevance has been commonly recognized. Participation studies regarding elementary school have generally been aimed at studying older children, even though participation should cover all education from first to ninth grade, based on the 2014 curricula for compulsory basic education. The objective of the study is to discover how second grade children experience participation in their school environment. Recent studies show that children's participation does not occur in broad communities as effectively as in smaller communities, such as families. Some reasons for the lack of occurrence of participation have been seen as children's incompetence, teachers' lack of resources, and schools' hierarchies. Children's experiences of participation have been previously studied by Kiili (2006), Thornberg and Elvstrand (2012), Alanko (2013), Virkki (2015), and Weckström, Jääskeläinen, Ruokonen, Karlsson and Ruismäki (2017). I will be reflecting on the success of participation compared to the example that has been adapted from the standard of participation by Salmikangas (1998) and Flöjt (1999). Methods. The study is based on phenomenographic tradition of study. The material was collected by executing focused interviews and inquirie to four second grade classes in a school located in the Helsinki Metropolitan area. 56 children took part in the inquiry. Children being interviewed belonged in a student council as either regular or deputy members (n=7). Analytical methods used in analyzing the material were thematizing and narrative analysis. Results and Conclusions. The children experienced that it is easy for them to voice their opinions at school, but teachers didn't always necessarily acknowledge them. This is seen to weaken the experience of participation. Voting seemed to be a suitable way to make decisions in the class, although deliberative democracy was also brought up as a means to decision making. Having an influence in the school's affairs was important to children, and having a say was seen as potential activity due to wide use of pronoun we. The children stressed the role of their own active human agency. However, social isolation prevented the experience of successful participation. The children diversely estimated the experience of participation, and demonstrated that they are the experts of their own lives. In the future, it would be seminal to advance children's opportunities to influence, and children should be further included in curriculum planning regarding matters that concern them. My study contributed important information about children's participation experiences, and will help further develop the awareness about participation in schools.