Children in the planning process - across scale policy translation of a children's standpoint

Abstract: In 2017, the Right of the Child UN convention will be legislated by Swedish authority; meaning that children’s rights will be statuary and a primary consideration at all civil levels. However, the universal definition of children’s rights opens for interesting questions regarding how a children’s standpoint is explained and expressed in different settings. The thesis hence seeks to place the interpretation of a children’s standpoint in a Swedish municipal planning context and relate the definitions to the global and national strategies of children’s rights implementation, in order to investigate observed variations and explanations between political scales. Following the children’s rights policy translation from a global to a local scale, the purpose is to examine if and how a children’s standpoint is present throughout varying political levels, as well as observe and explain the variations of policy implementation. The theoretical framework hence relates to perspectives of policy translation throughout political scales, where theories of structured power within the field of urban planning and power in relation to children as a group are used to explain and describe possible variations. Through content analysis, a structured power perspective is accordingly applied to global and national strategies of children’s rights, Swedish planning and constructing regulations (PBL), and municipal zoning plans sampled from the municipalities of Malmö and Eslöv. The results show the definition of a children’s standpoint to be gradually narrowed from a global to a local scale, where, in particular, economic interests and traditional preconceptions of children might serve as explanatory factors regarding the variations observed. Accordingly, there might be a possible risk of urban areas being normatively planned for adults, whereas children are seen as deviant and less likely of consideration within certain plans and contexts.