Abstract

The present study deals with the topic of children's rights in the perspective of social representation theory. A questionnaire was distributed to a sample of 243 university students, attending two different faculties: law and psychology. The study was carried out in two phases: first, we analysed the degree of consensus and the individual positionings on the topic of responsibility of different agencies (government, family, school, myself, judicial authority, voluntary associations, police). Secondly, we highlighted the anchorage of individual positionings in terms of values, explanations and discriminations. The results give evidence to several topics organizing social representations of children's rights, in particular those of responsibility, personal engagement, respect, violations, justice.