Family life and the Environment: Children’s perceptions of their agency as household members and environmental citizens

My research explores the ways in which children in different cultural locations (Andhra Pradesh, India and UK) understand the environment and its relation to their daily lives, how they assess their agency in relation to household environmental practices and decisions, and the meanings they attribute to the environment and their environmental behaviour. Using critical discourse analysis and narrative research techniques, I will compare representations of children’s agency in environmental and children’s rights literature with children’s narrative accounts of everyday life in Andhra Pradesh and the UK. Children’s narrative accounts will be gathered through interviews, community mapping and participant-generated photo data, and will be informed by secondary analysis of qualitative data collected from families in Andhra Pradesh as part of Young Lives, an international study of childhood poverty. This research is part of the Narratives of Varied Everyday Life and Linked Approaches (NOVELLA) research node.