Contested Childhood

This article examines discourses of childhood drawn from press reports, parliamentary debates and government-sponsored reports concerning the Travelling People, an indigenous ethnic minority population in Ireland. Discourses of childhood are located within a changing Irish political economy and shifting Traveller-related policy. The case study reveals how discourses of childhood articulate with, and often reinforce, inferiorizing discourses of racism, gender and class. It is argued that critical analyses of the discourses of childhood can simultaneously challenge naturalized constructions of `the child' and other discourses of social inequality.