The kids are not alright: Children as objects, audience, and agents in the 2022 Canadian convoy protests

Abstract

AbstractChildren figure prominently in far‐right movements, ideologies, and conspiracy theories as innocent targets of nefarious and decadent forces, unwitting symbols of social and political decay, and potentially dangerous objects of moral panic. Far‐right movements thus map a wide‐ranging network of concerns about immigration, race, public health, education, and globalization onto children's bodies and spaces. Yet children and youth also actively participate in these movements or are otherwise socialized into them, inhabiting and making the everyday geographies of the far right in numerous ways. Children's presence at and participation in a series of protests and occupations in Canada in early 2022 demonstrates well their place in far‐right movements as symbols and agents, and connects the Canadian far right to broader spatial and temporal perspectives shared across the transnational landscape of such movements. These protests, dubbed the “Freedom Convoy” by participants and ostensibly aiming to end vaccine mandates in the Canadian trucking industry, quickly turned to more general antigovernment demands and became far‐right networking events. This paper examines more closely children's presence at and participation in the Canadian protests and how the movements behind them position children as object, audience, and agent in the spatiality of the far right's current transnational resurgence.