Children’s Rights in Brazilian Schools: A Living Law Informed Ethnography

Sammanfattning: Children's rights are a crucial area of research since children are among the most vulnerable groups in every society. The state laws, including the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), set out the rights of children and prescribes the obligations of governments and adults to ensure their protection, provision for their needs and grant them the right to participate in the decisions which affect their lives. Thus, the aim of this thesis is to explore the implementation of these rights and its relevant themes pointed out by the academic works in the Brazilian educational setting. For this study, I had to conduct a literature review that took into account the international as well as Brazilian literature published in recent years. This was necessary because previous Brazilian studies focused solely on domestic legislation and did not consider the CRC. As a theoretical socio-legal framework I decided to use the living law theory in a bottom-up approach. To achieve the goals, I did ethnography fieldwork in two schools to generate data that would provide me with the necessary experiences to analyse the problem. I present my results in a description in which I promote a dialogue among my findings and the literature, but also a dialogue between law in books and law in action (schools’ living law). The thesis concludes that the rights to protection and provision are well established in the school environment. However, participation is a right not granted to students. This thesis aims to contribute to the living law understanding of children rights in education setting, and also to the academic and social debate on how implement the absent rights.