Session Information
05 SES 11 A, Examining “Vulnerability” and “Fragility” in Children and Young People and their Experiences of Education
Symposium
Contribution
According to the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (2018), almost 25 million children and young people in the European Union, 26 per cent of the 0-17 population, were at risk of poverty or social exclusion in 2016. Rates of mental and behavioural health problems among adolescents in Europe continue to increase and disadvantaged young people are much more prone to develop such issues (World Health Organisation, 2016). Estimates suggest there are at least 15 million children and young people with special educational needs in Europe. Increasingly in recent years, children and young people affected by these issues have been brought together fairly indiscriminately under the description “vulnerable”. This symposium proposes to explore new ground in examining: how the issue of “vulnerability” is being constructed in different European contexts; some of the different ways in which vulnerable children and young people are supported; how they experience education and other areas of social provision; and early findings about how the social and psychological effects of COVID-19 have magnified vulnerability and fragility.
The papers examine vulnerability at three levels: society – institution – individual, using a broadly interpretative approach and theoretical frameworks drawn from inclusive education, psychoanalysis and participatory research. It has become increasingly common to identify a “vulnerability trend” in social policy (Brown, 2015), as “vulnerable” families, children and/or groups have become the focus of a range of intervention programmes in the UK and Europe. Ecclestone (2016) has been foremost in questioning the utility and application of the term ‘vulnerable’ in a series of articles which have criticised broader definitions of vulnerability for diverting resources away from those most in need (Brown, Ecclestone and Emmel 2017). We have taken this as a starting point for examining the utility of terms like “vulnerability” and “fragility” in relation to young people and their experiences of education. Alongside analysis of contemporaneous structures and practice, these papers focus on exploring how educational administration, schools, teachers and other professionals who work with young people can best address, and reflect, the vulnerabilities of the children and young people with whom they work, as well as examining the methodological challenges of undertaking this kind of research and maximising its impact.
Research questions which have structured the research reported in this symposium include:
- How are the terms “vulnerable”, “vulnerability” and “fragility” (and their translations) applied to children and young people in different contexts?
- How have these applications affected children and young people’s experiences of education and other forms of social care and provision?
- What are “vulnerable” children and young people’s experiences of education (formally and informally) in different contexts?
References
Brown, K. (2015) Vulnerability and Young People: Care and Social Control in Policy and Practice. Bristol: Policy Press. Brown, K. Ecclestone, K., and Emmel, N. (2017) Review article: The many faces of vulnerability, Social Policy and Society, 16 (3): 497-510. Ecclestone, K. (2016) Behaviour change policy agendas for ‘vulnerable’ subjectivities: the dangers of therapeutic governance and its new entrepreneurs, Journal of Education Policy, 32 (1): 48-62. European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (2018) Combating child poverty: an issue of fundamental rights. Luxembourg: European Union.
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.