The authors explore new ways of conceptualizing children’s citizenship and participation through the capabilities approach (Sen 1999) applied to children (Biggeri et al. 2011). They highlight factors that must be considered when observing how formal entitlements, such as the rights of the child, can (or cannot) be transformed into real freedom to participate. Their study conducted in Switzerland and in France shows the conditions for the right to be heard (art. 12 UNCRC) to be converted into effective participation in organised leisure activities. The authors identify four sets of factors (economical, political, organisational and personal) that convert or obstruct the child’s entitlement to participate in the definition of organized leisure activities. Two ideal types – bottom-up participation and top-down participation – are built along these lines. The research shows that child participation is mainly induced by professional adults working in youth associations and leisure centres while knowledge of “participation rights” is rather low. Respondents do very seldom use the narrative of “children’s rights” to reflect upon their praxis. This typical line of conduct, or “system of action”, indicates that social relations play a greater role than children’s rights in their subjective evaluation of participatory projects. The study highlights child participation as a sequential process whereby the actor’s reflexivity plays an important role as a converting factor, and thus enriches the theoretical model used in the capabilities approach (Bonvin 2008). The results have important implications for the paradigm of the social actor and contribute to the theory of child participation (Thomas 2007). They underline the instrumental dimension of participation rights as they become real through the exercise of participation itself. The chapter allows for important theoretical and practical developments in the field of child participation, notably by discussing the issue of agency within structure and suggesting a dynamic framework to understand agency as a system of action.

Children’s rights have hardly been analysed in terms of the capability approach (CA), which was developed by Amartya Sen (1999) and Martha Nussbaum (2000), and many other scholars. This book is among the first attempts to bridge the two, and it appears after a few contributions to this endeavour (Biggeri et al. 2010, 2011; Dixon and Nussbaum 2012). Children’s rights and the capability approach are not of the same nature: children’s rights are a social reality and the capability approach is a perspective to reflect on it. The capability approach is a way to operationalize formal freedoms (entitlements), and hence children’s rights. The challenges of applying a capability approach to children's rights include, notably, to go beyond the pitfalls of the new social studies of childhood. The contributions to this book are briefly presented. They highlight important issues that have to be taken into account to approach children's rights in new ways.