CHILDREN REPRESENTING CHILDREN Participation and the problem of diversity in UK youth councils

This article is concerned with the relationship between children's participation and the diversity of childhoods. While there are a number of different arrangements for encouraging children and young people to participate, the article focuses on a dominant mode of participation through which children are elected to represent the interests of other children within formal institutional structures. Drawing on empirical data from work with school and civic councillors in the UK, the article critically addresses two questions: what level of involvement do these child representatives have within their schools and communities that allow them to articulate the interests of their peers? To what extent do these representative forms of children's participation reflect the interests of diverse groups of children? The article concludes that the implementation of electoral forms of participation reinforce existing inequalities between groups of young people and are less likely to incorporate the voices of disadvantaged and socially excluded groups of young people. Formal structures of democratic representation may need to be revised in exploring more fruitful ways of articulating the voices of diverse groups of children and young people.