Children’s Agency
摘要
The notion of agency has been widely debated within the human and social sciences and continues to be so. After briefly contextualising the notion and its developments in childhood studies, this chapter proposes the notion of children’s food agency in order to better grasp how children in asylum-seeking situations navigate diverse social spaces (reception centre, school, family), each with its own values, norms and constraints. Focusing on their lunchboxes (snacks and lunches) allows to show how identity transmission, value judgements and constraints shape the conditions under which children’s food agency is exercised, whether under the supervision of adults or among peers. The lunchbox implies local (food model) and global (importance of nutritional health standards) norms and values, placing it at the intersection of social reproduction at micro (family, peers) and macro (school, reception centre) levels, ex/inclusion process, and possible contextual and relational children’s food agency.