Voice but No Choice—Children’s Right to Participation in Sweden

This chapter will deal with what role children’s right to participation plays in Swedish law. Two aspects of children’s right to participation are analysed. First participation for children from a ‘democracy perspective’, or in other words participation as a collective right for children to influence public decision-making, and secondly children’s right to be heard in the Swedish child protection system, as an example on how the right to participation affects children in individual cases. The aim is to examine and discuss whether reasonable conditions for participation and for children’s wishes and views to be given due weight are given in Sweden today. The view taken, is that the question is ‘not only’ how to best implement children’s right to participation, but also to analyse and question what children’s right to participation can and/or should mean. An overall conclusion is that, although children’s rights – not least participatory rights – are on the political agenda, and in spite of the fact that children are increasingly given voice in line with the crc, they are not given much decision-making power, and certainly not the vote in political elections. In order for children’s participatory rights to become something more than a problematic reinforcement of children’s subordination, the conclusion is that there is a need to rethink – or at least to clarify – what children’s right to participation is supposed to mean in practice in Sweden today and in the future