Introduction
Due to the key role played by the concept of ‘agency’ over the last two decades in childhood studies, the twentieth century has been recently defined as the age of children’s agency (Oswell, 2013). Indeed, the idea of children and young people as social agents has become a type of mantra within the social sciences (Ahearn, 2001, p.109; Bordonaro, 2012, p.414). Since Prout and James’ (1990, p.8) statement that ‘children are not just passive subjects of social structures and processes but active in the construction and determination of their own social lives,’ both political agendas and scholarly research have come together in recognizing children’s competencies (Abebe, 2019; Edmonds, 2019; Tisdall & Punch, 2012). These new perspectives have brought a radical shift into the old views of children and childhood development (James, Jenks, & Prout, 1998), transforming childhood into a more ‘socio-cultural’ category, characterized by its own social, cultural and spatial characteristics and differences (Abebe, 2019; Hammersley, 2017).
The concept of agency has become very popular within several disciplines, from psychology and sociology to human geography and anthropology (Ahearn, 2001; Bandura, 2001, 2018; Mezirow, 1981). However, this term has gained resonance in the absence of any explicit definition of its core meaning (Eteläpelto, Vähäsantanen, Hökkä, & Paloniemi, 2013). A bundle of concepts has been used interchangeably with the term of agency, such as ‘free will’ (Ahearn, 2001), ‘self-efficacy’ (Bandura, 2018; Gecas, 1989), ‘personal autonomy’ (Seeman & Seeman, 1983), ‘planful competence’ (Clausen 1995), and ‘internal locus of control’ (Rotter, 1966). As a result, agency is often still described within the literature a ‘slippery term’ (Hitlin & Elder, 2007, p.170) and a considerable ‘source of increasing strain and confusion in social thought’ (Emirbayer & Mische, 1998, p.962).
Without dwelling on the important academic discussions on this topic, the issue on how to intend the relation between agency and structure must be taken into consideration to present our work and the definition of agency that we have adopted (Coffey & Farrugia, 2014; Furlong, Woodman, & Wyn, 2011). Debates over the place of individuals within social structures have led to the development of different research traditions, born in the attempt to answer to the question of what matters more, structure or agency? (Settersten & Gannon, 2005). On the one hand, academics have emphasized the role of the individuals as the primary architects of their own lives, describing agency as a force that emerges in resistance to social forces (Coffey and Farrrugia, 2014; Settersten & Gannon, 2005). On the other hand, considering structure as ‘a powerful set of stable top-down forces that impinge upon individuals and cannot be (easily) altered’ (Settersten & Gannon, 2005, p.37), a second current emphasized the key role of the social structure within the individual’s life, developments, and opportunities (Durham, 2008; Hammersley, 2017). Criticizing the idea of agency as a mere exercise of free will against the constraints of structure, this second approach have highlighted the powerful social and historical forces that direct and enable an individual’s agency (Giddens, 1984; Mizen & Ofusu-Kusi, 2013).
Moving toward a more holistic attempt to capture the fundamentally intertwined nature of structure and agency, contemporary literature no longer divorces agency from structural forces (Hitlin & Elder, 2007; Sewell, 1992). There is now a common understanding that social class, ethnicity, economic conditions, and living environment, are all factors that influence people’s agency (Eteläpelto et al., 2013). Only by considering agency within structures we are able to delve into the interactions between social settings and children’s capacities and resources (Settersten & Gannon, 2005). Terms such as ‘tactical agency’ (Honwana, 2005), ‘bounded agency’ (Evans, 2002, 2007), ‘opportunities for agency’ (Moen, 2013) or ‘thin agency’ (Klocker, 2007) are all attempts to capture this interdependent relation between agency and structural forces (such as social structures, contexts and relationships), which can act as ‘thinners’ or ‘thickeners’ (Klocker, 2007, p.85) of an individual’s agency.
This understanding of children’s agency as being in constant tension with structural forces has been of significant importance within the research focused on children living in challenging and violent contexts (Mizen & Ofosu-Kusi, 2013). Scholars have started to uncover how young people ‘manage’ their life within contexts characterized by oppression and political violence, documenting their capabilities to mobilize resources within the diverse spheres of family, community, economy, workforce and education, and political and civic engagement (Abebe, 2019; Beazley, 2007; Bell & Payne, 2009; Oswell, 2013; Veronese, Sousa, Cavazzoni, Shoman, 2020). Multiple forms of agency have been documented observing the ways in which children navigate within their environment in the face of threats to maintain their own safety, well-being, and development (Bordonaro, 2012; Robson et al., 2007; Veronese, Cavazzoni, Antenucci, 2018; Williamson & Robinson, 2006). Researchers have begun to recognize the agency of children living on the streets, who are possessors of conscious livelihood strategies and not merely passive victims of circumstances (Kovats-Bernat, 2006; Offit, 2008). Similarly, children living in contexts characterized by armed conflict and political violence have displayed a variety of strategies in order to restore their life and well-being (Chatty, 2010; Veronese et al., 2017).
However, scholars are still jointly calling for the need to develop empirical research that moves beyond the mere recognition of children’s agency and is instead directed at exploring the kind of agency that children have, how the context shapes it, and how their agency relates to others (Abebe, 2019, p.6; Durham, 2008, p.151). Academics are highlighting the necessity of considering agency within a socio-cultural and socio-ecological perspective in order to animate local concept of agency (Edmonds, 2019; Sutterluty & Tisdall, 2019).
Therefore, in the present study, wherein agency is conceptualized as ‘the ways in which individual counteract their own life course through the choices and actions they take within the opportunities and constraints of history and social circumstances,’ (Elder, Johnson, Crosnoem 2003, p.5), we explore the agency of a group of children living in Occupied Palestinian Territories. In order to fill the gaps mentioned above, we addressed both children’s ‘agentic practices’ (Maxwell & Aggleton, 2014) as well as the resources and constraints that exist in the settings around them. Recognizing agency as situated in practices and actions taking place in a specific social and temporal context, we focus on how children are able to navigate their environment and activate whatever resources exist in it, while also managing to preserve their well-being despite the persistent challenges. This work delves into the multiple ways in which children exert their agency and how this agency relates to their families, communities, and surrounding contexts.