While the discourse on the rights and participation of disabled people is hardly focusing on children, the discourse on children's rights is hardly ever considering children with disabilities. The proposal aims to analyse the largely separate discourses on childhood and disability, children's rights and the rights of disabled people and their participation. In doing so, it intends to emphasise the potential of discourse entanglement for the implementation of the rights of children and young people with disabilities.

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UN-CRC, UN 1989) calls for the realization of 'protection', 'provision' and 'participation'. One of the four guiding principles of the UN CRC stipulates that 'the best interests of the child' (Art. 3, para. 1) should be taken into account in the best possible way in all measures that affect them. However, in Germany, as in many other countries, the innovative potential of the UN CRC is underestimated. All Children but especially children who contradict norms of a presumed ‘normal childhood’, such as children with disabilities, are treated in a patronising way, with children's rights being reduced to the legal groups of protection rights and rights to care and services and participatory rights being neglected. Such a practice contradicts UN CRC, which recognises children as independent legal subjects from birth, doing so in a binding form under international law for the first time (Lindmeier 2023). The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UN CRPD, UN 2006) which aims to ensure the rights of disabled people of all ages, also implies a comprehensive recognition of the interests, participation rights and subject status of children in Art. 7 para. 3 (Rossa, 2014). This assures the right of disabled children to be heard (Art. 12 UN CRC) in a double manner.

Nevertheless, there are serious deficits in the establishment of sustainable and effective participation opportunities for children and young people with disabilities and their agency(Lindmeier, 2023; Mac Arthur et al. 2007). In practice, the participation of children with disabilities does not sufficiently fulfil the requirements of both conventions. In particular, participants do not have sufficient clarity about their roles and functions and the resulting power to influence. There is also a lack of transparency and accessible communication, and the interests of children with disabilities are hardly represented, "not to mention by children and young people themselves" (Deutsches Institut für Menschenrechte, 2015, 10). 

The proposal analyses the concepts of disability and childhood, agency and vulnerability, using critical discourse analysis. In doing so, it aims at changing the view of children with disabilities by paying more attention to children's agency (Ehrenberg 2023; Priestley, 2020), informed by an understanding of children as active social actors. A general attribution of children with disabilities as vulnerable bears the risk of stigmatizing them instead of building upon their resources, and the risk of distracting from social inequality and emerging power relations instead of critically discussing and breaking them down (Schmitt, 2019). In order establish an inclusive childhood education, it is necessary, on the one hand, to focus more strongly on children's interests and, on the other hand, not to neglect group-specific vulnerability. In addition, it is necessary to take into account the communicative conditions under which disabled children can assert their right to be heard. The final question is therefore how disabled children realize agency under these conditions and what significance the perspective on children's rights and interests has. This will be discussed in conclusion with reference to the authors' initial empirical work and will result in suggestions on participatory research methods suitable to involve disabled children in a meaningful way.

The proposal uses the method of critical discourse analysis to analyse, critically discuss and emphasize dominant knowledge structures and bring together different discourses (Traue et al. 2014). Firstly, the right to participation and agency of children with disabilities is analysed on the basis of international human rights documents. In particular, General Comment No. 7 on the right to participation of the UN CRPD is analysed. This is followed by an exemplary analysis of press releases from international organisations on the 30th anniversary of the UN CRC, which shows that the participation rights and agency of children are, at first glance, relevant. A power-critical analysis is used to determine whether the voices of the children merely serve to amplify and authorize the voices of the adult actors, and what image of an "ideal childhood" they produce. Discourses are producing a social meaning through communicative and strategic action in a situationally enduring way. Critical discourse analysis was theoretically founded by Michael Foucault, among others, who defines discourses as “procedures that act as principles of classification, arrangement and distribution” (Foucault 2014, 17) and emphasizes the reciprocal relationship between knowledge and power in discourses. Consequently, knowledge is generated as well as structured and transported through discourse. In this case, it is knowledge about children and people with disabilities as (not) capable of speech and as beings with (limited) potential for autonomy. Embedded in this is both the image of an ‘ideal child’ and a ‘good childhood’ (Sünker & Bühler-Niederberger, 2020). As discourse analysis aims to examine contemporary concepts and the knowledge embedded in them, the focus is on their historical context as well as their temporal and situational localization and the subjectivations contained therein (Traue et al. 2014). The knowledge disseminated therein specifically guides interpretation processes, produces truths and creates classifications (Kerner 2017). Thus, the relationship between power and knowledge in discourses becomes recognizable.

The analysis shows that in the relationship between power and knowledge, an image of disabled children emerges which, leads to a double vulnerability of disabled children through prejudice and the denial of rights. The intersectional discourse analysis shows that childhood and disability both have an inherent construction of imperfection linked to concepts of ability. Both children and people with disabilities are addressed as insufficiently capable, dependent and deficient compared to non-disabled adults. In intersection of disability with childhood as a specifically vulnerable phase of life, an ascribed double vulnerability emerges, which restricts the the opportunities for agency and participation of children with disabilities. Thus, the interaction of adultism and ableism leads to discrimination which is not even discussed openly but hidden beneath a protective approach. The aim of inclusive childhood education should be to understand and address the relationship between independence and dependency, the significance of vulnerability and agency (Schmitt, 2019) and the generational order (Eckermann & Heinzel, 2018) more precisely in the context of disability.

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