Children, Critical Geopolitics, and Peace: Mapping and Mobilizing Children's Hopes for Peace in the Philippines

Abstract

This article focuses on the role and agency of children in shaping the trajectories and outcomes of peace in Mindanao in the southern Philippines. Through the analysis of children's narratives that are articulated around their vision maps of peace, I argue that such cartographic representations and dialogues of the everyday open up opportunities for them to critically reflect on their understandings of and hopes for peace. This essentially contributes to children's formation as active geopolitical actors, allowing them to negotiate broader structures, relations, and identifications of violence to situate their aspirations for peace. Rather than viewing such embodied spatial practices as having no wider political implications, I showcase efforts that seek to mobilize children's hopeful imag(in)ings for the harnessing of coalitional formations toward transformative possibilities. This enables the development of ethical relationships between local communities and other relevant stakeholders, leading to the formulation of appropriate strategies to stamp out the reproduction of violence across generations. In so doing, this article aligns to yet extends emerging literatures that cast attention on the different actors and their grounded enactments of peace. Specifically, it calls for the explicit acknowledgment of children's involvement in the rethinking and remaking of issues pertaining to geopolitics (and peace) that should be seen as closely intertwined with the everyday lives of children throughout the world.