Children and young people's relationships, relational processes and social change: reading across worlds

Abstract

We begin by defining relationships and relational processes, before presenting children's personal relationships, and the relational processes making them personal, as of particular significance in shaping selves and social worlds. This sets the scene for the relevance of children and young people's personal relationships compared across Majority and Minority Worlds to debates about global social change. This includes claims characterising change in terms of ‘individualisation’, ‘democratisation’ and ‘commercialisation’. The authors’ work on children's adult–child relationship in public places and on children and young people's experiences of parent precipitated family household change in a Minority World context is briefly compared to insights from studies of Majority World street children and of children and young people with migrant parents in the Majority World.