TY  - BOOK
AU  - Boussion,Samuel
TI  - A ‘UN of War Orphans’? The Internationalist and Pedagogical Challenges of Children Communities
PY  - 2025///.
							
N1  - 8
N2  - ‪In the post-war period, children’s communities—some of which proclaimed themselves as ‘children’s republics’—spread across Europe to care for homeless children who were orphaned or separated from their families. The rehabilitation of these children was closely linked to the new roles expected of them, where they had to contribute to building the future, supported by a pedagogical internationalism founded on active education, self-governance, coeducation, and international understanding. Drawing on the archives of the FICE (International Federation of Children’s Communities), which has been in charge of uniting such communities since 1948, alongside some of these communities and UNESCO, which endorsed the movement, this article explores the contours of internationalism during the emergence of the Cold War. It particularly seeks to assess the disparity between the stated ideals and the realities of the undertaken experiments. The aim is to understand the aggregation process among children’s communities across borders, utilising both established networks and the support of UNESCO. Although internationalism was gaining momentum, the movement’s aspirations were gradually hindered by both the Iron Curtain and national child protection policies. A redefinition of educational boundaries occurred, in which children were transformed into ideological instruments of the Cold War, caught between American soft power and tensions with popular democracies. Furthermore, while the children’s communities endeavoured to establish practices to connect beyond their initial Western European circle—highlighting the international children’s village of Trogen, publishing an international children’s newspaper, hosting international children’s meetings, etc.—this abundance of initiatives also presented an opportunity to observe the resistance to internationalism. Ultimately, it appears as a fiction, based on the notion that children should be the key players in reconstruction, given the significant role of adults and limited interactions.‪
UR  - https://shs.cairn.info/journal-histoire-de-leducation-2025-1-page-125?lang=en&redirect-ssocas=7080
ER  -