Children’s participation and protection in a globalised world: reimagining ‘too young to wed’ through a cultural politics of childhood

The article responds to the question of how to facilitate participation in international child protection efforts by examining the ways a critique of power can broaden participation, as well as how the cultural politics of childhood and globalisation frame these efforts. The argument that is advanced is to expand participation by formulating an imaginative and dynamic model of power to include children and young people in interrogating the ways power underscores relations in protection/participation efforts. Engaging children and young people in recognising the ways power works in their own lives so that they can identify it, exposes the workings of power in ways that clears a space to view children beyond objects of protection.