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The last body of literature to be discussed is children’s rights. Children’s rights are also a key aspect of both previous literatures examined: childhood studies and children’s citizenship. Reynaert et al (2009) suggest that children’s rights have become a significant field of study due to the adoption of the UNCRC, and any scholarly work on children’s rights is ‘inconceivable’ to them without considering the convention (ibid). Invernizzi and Williams (2008) address rights as being a fundamentally embedded notion in the discourse and theory of citizenship. So too, it is evident that the advent of children’s rights, following on from the UNCRC in 1989, inspired a proliferation of research on childhoods. However, children’s rights can also be classed as its own, established and legitimate body of literature, albeit interlinked with the two previous mentioned (Quennerstedt, 2013). It is this body of literature that this section addresses. It is a shorter

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section than the previous two given its relative under-theorisation as a field of studies (Arce, 2015), as well as because of overlap with the two previous literatures.

As this chapter has already attested to, the UN Convention for the Rights of the Child has inspired rights-based approaches to the study of childhoods and children. As was mentioned in the previous chapter, the convention pledges basic human rights for children: the right to a childhood, to be educated and healthy, to be treated fairly and to be heard (UNICEF, 1989). It is a rights text and an international agreement, but can be approached by some as something much more than that, a moral authority to be viewed without challenge (Bourdillon et al, 2010). However, this unchallengeable authority inspires much critique on the discourse of children’s rights which will be discussed shortly. Some of the rights codified in the UNCRC are shared with the rights of all people, or adults, others are particular to children (Archard, 2013). With this, Archard develops Feinberg’s (1980) categorisation of children’s rights as A rights, C rights and AC rights. A rights are adult only rights, and are to do with franchise and being above the age of majority. The rights holder is deemed to be the best judge of their own interests. C rights are particular to children, treating them as objects or recipients of protection and welfare (beyond what is afforded to adults), by virtue of their immaturity or capacity and their need to be safeguarded and cared for. Archard calls these protection rights. AC rights are common to both adults and children, such as general welfare rights.

Reynaert et al (2009) argue that there are three common themes identified in the literature on children’s rights. The first is a focus on children’s competency and their right to participation. This is directly related to the literature on the sociology of childhood, as discussed in the first section, and the claim (by the likes of James and James, 2004 and James et al, 1998) that children are competent beings and recognised as they are in the present, rather than becoming adults. The second theme is changing views on childhood, and the manner in which this is generating tensions between the child and parents, producing a dichotomy of children’s and parents’ rights. The third theme, and according to Quennerstedt (2013), the most important contribution, is the ‘global rights industry’, ‘that research has engaged in an international consensus building around children's rights’ (Quennerstedt, 2013: 236). This, built upon work by Stammers (1999), refers to the vast amount of literature that is concerned with standard-setting, implementation and monitoring of human rights, and specifically, children’s rights and the UNCRC.

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This ‘global rights industry’ research is focussed on the how rights recognised in the UNCRC have been realised in practice in various areas of society, and has compared implementation in different regions of the world (ibid). From this review of literature comes a critique from Reynaert et al (2009) that children's rights research lacks critical engagement: children’s rights are presented as the new norm in policy and practice without any questioning or problematisation of this norm. Reynaert et al (2012) write that children’s rights are understood in an unambiguous way, and that there is a social consensus towards children’s rights. The UNCRC, they believe, is perceived as an instruction for policy and practice, yet there is a gap between the reality and convention. The implementation of the convention thus becomes a matter of following the instruction to fill the gap. Research on this, thus, is uncritical: it merely checks the way or extent to which the UNCRC has been implemented in practice. Reynaert et al (2012) believe that the convention should be a starting point for critique in children’s rights research, challenging its norms and assumptions. Another critique of the UNCRC is that it is distant from the reality of children’s lives and experiences in the Global South (Invernizzi et al, 2016).

The limitations of Reynaert et al (2012; 2009) are that their ideas are based on literature up until 2007. Since then Quennerstedt (2013) has proposed that research into children's rights issues needs to address three interrelated challenges, which are (a) advancing critique, (b) increasing theorisation and (c) contextualising research, building upon Reynaert et al (2012). She calls for research to be more critical, especially when concerning the UNCRC and the basic assumptions on which it rests. Consensus on children’s rights, she believes, is not necessarily a good thing. There should exist a certain amount of disagreement, which will encourage debate, discussion and new thinking and questions.

Arce (2015) also supports many of the critiques above, calling for further research that fills a theoretical void and that is not bounded by institutional frameworks (i.e. the UNCRC). Arce’s critiques focus on five areas: the position of children's rights research within the wider interdisciplinary field of childhood studies (taking interdisciplinarity seriously), the necessity to move away from emphasis and attention on children's participation to children's citizenship, the normative (il)legitimacy of the international system of children's rights, the consideration of children's rights as a branch of antidiscrimination law, and the (uneasy) relationship between children's rights and

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children's 'sciences’. Of these critiques, this thesis is primarily concerned with the first three. The first, regarding interdisciplinarity of children’s rights within childhood studies, is also about questioning this interdisciplinarity and not accepting it, and about understanding the key tools and concepts of the study of children’s rights, just as childhood studies granted scholarly work with useful tools and concepts like agency, social construction etc. The second, the apparent necessity to move from children’s participation to children’s citizenship, is born from a critique of the UNCRC, which only accords to children the right to participate (Article 12), instead of children’s citizenship, which would imply at the least the political influence and norm making capacity of children. The third, the normative (il)legitimacy of the (international) system of children's rights, is to do with the UNCRC lacking legitimacy because of the lack of inclusion of children (no legislation, inclusion or endorsement). This is based on views of children at the time lacking competency to do so, and to do with the restrictive, narrow framework of UNCRC which paints a very specific image/ideal of childhood and children’s rights. This is something that Law 548 counters, in that it was created with input from children.

Hanson and Nieuwenhuys (2013), and van Daalen et al (2016) propose the notion of living rights to illustrate how children, whilst making use of notions of rights, shape what these rights are, and become, in the social world. They argue that children’s rights are not those defined and codified. Rather, rights exist in the real world and are based on lived experiences before they are codified. This creates a critical distance from the legal and political arenas where children’s rights are invoked (van Daalen et al, 2016). Rights are positions to be occupied, and children's rights are positions to be occupied by children (Hanson and Nieuwenhuys, 2013). Together with the concept of lived citizenship, this notion forms part of the conceptual framework which will be discussed shortly.

The literature on children’s rights in Bolivia is very thin. Only one scholar has really engaged with it, and a couple of pieces have touched on it. Liebel (2015) and Liebel et al (2016) examine Law 548 and working children’s movements in the context of children’s rights. Indeed, Liebel et al (2016) examined the right to work as a living right, based on the work of Hanson and Nieuwenhuys (2013). Fontana and Grugel (2015) touch upon children’s rights when examining ILO C.182, but they are mostly concerned with human rights norms.

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Critical reflections on scholarly research on children’s rights might thus be summed up as follows. First, the study of children’s rights as its own area of study is still relatively new, but justifiably one in its own right. Second, scholars are calling for a more critical approach to children’s rights, instead of an uncritical acceptance of UNCRC norms and values. Key are Arce’s (2015) calls for a questioning and understanding of how children’s rights can help weave the fabric of the broader childhood studies. Third, context is important, which has also been important for the two previously discussed bodies of literature: childhood studies and citizenship. Fourth, while children’s rights as a body of literature has been examined, it is also important to understand it as a concept, to see how it can be operationalised in this research. Lastly, there is little work within this children’s rights literature that specifically addresses the Bolivian context. Where there is, by Liebel, it is on the right to work, illustrating the importance of this topic and the need for more research.