We are very happy to present the dossier^[1]: "Participation and resistance of children and young people in Latin America: agency, protagonism and collective mobilization", conceived from the discussions generated within the scope of the Latin American Network for Research and Reflection with Children and Youth (REIR, in Spanish). We work with the perspective to articulate researchers within Latin America. The main objective of REIR is to make visible, in a transdisciplinary perspective, the agencies, protagonists and co-protagonists with children and young people. This dossier is conceived to open dialogs on experiences with children and youngsters, as part of an academic space permanently linked to children and youth‘s organizations. In REIR, we want to strengthen these links and make this issue more visible.

This dossier is opportunely presented during the global sanitary emergency due to COVID-19, during an historic moment when people of the world experiment social isolation which generate many doubts, and fears and discomfort which seem to have no end. It comes also in a period of resistance: people and particularly young ones are resisting to authoritative governments which have forced them in many ways: expelling them from their territories, confronting them with military and para military forces, and drugs or racism, and so on. Nevertheless, they fight for democracy, social justice and equity and against the neoliberal measures suffocating the whole region.

In this dossier, we address the notions of participation, resistance, protagonism and collective actions of childhood and youth, opposite to adult centered processes which range from invisibility, to silencing or even violent repression. Therefore, we seek to be a space that welcomes, listens, makes visible and echoes the great diversity of ways in which children and young people act in the world. We also want to contribute to define historically, socially and culturally the ways in which they express their agency and protagonisms and how they build their collective mobilization. From REIR, we understand that youngsters are capable of organizing, meeting, proposing and generating relevant processes to solve their needs and social problems with adults, although we know that many times, they did it alone. In this way, they express themselves not only as social actors and agents, but also as political agents; both as individuals, but above all, as groups.

We seek to generate collective discussions on the scope and limitations of the concepts of participation, resistance, agency, protagonism and collective mobilization, and present various ways in which childhood and youth express themselves against the structure of historically constructed relationships. We are looking for bringing together perspectives which can reveal the mechanisms contributing to the naturalization of inequality.

It is important to note that the concept of action has been generally used as a synonym for agency, many times without problematizing or recognizing the multiple forms of action of children and young people against the structure in the processes of reproduction, production, appropriation, resistance and transformation. However, this debate finds paths in Latin American thoughts and social movements that address the dimension of subjectivity and otherness, that is, the power of "experience" and "encounter", of collective contexts that build not only the social life but also the communitarian one. These contributions are supported by research experiences with children and young people to generate methodological ways to explain power’s relationships and enable conditions for the real participation of children and young people in the processes of knowledge production; this will allow a broader and reflective understanding of their general and daily experiences. In this way, it will be possible to understand the political, economic, and cultural organization, among others, that mark their experiences in the world.

The concept of resistance that is configured in this dossier refers to conscious action in the face of hurtful contexts, placing political motivation and consciousness at the center of the debate to understand resistance as political outrage and not as learned helplessness. Thus, the resilient person is not the one who adapts and renounces to the fight, but the one who proposes to change his/her society and conditions of existence, or the political subject of resistance, or the group derived from it. He/She changes, is transformed so he/she impacts on his/her most immediate context.

We know that children and young people are exposed to multiple dimensions of structural, symbolic, physical or psychological violence, manifested by the state or intra-family political violence which naturalizes social behaviors such as punishment, aggression or abuse, and, at the same time, builds subjects of invisibility. and anonymity, often subjected to conditions of intersectionality that (re) victimize and exclude.

From this perspective, this dossier seeks to echo the voices of children and young people, dialogue with them, and learn their multiple realities and make them known. Thus, the articles: "Espacios lúdicos y territorios para niños y niñas: ludotecas en zonas vulnerables"^[2]; “Bibliotecas comunitárias: dialogismo y colaboración con las niñeces para descolonizarnos”^[3]; “Del efecto phármakon a la reinvención de subjetividades infantiles en la cibercultura”^[4] and “Vivênciasinfantis nos territórios do Paranoá e Itapoã no Distrito Federal” ^[5] present collective processes, realities and contexts that facilitate the construction of new knowledge, articulate the perspective of education and rights based on voices of the actors themselves and their ways of seeing and understanding the world. The articles “Infâncias e agência política em ações coletivas e movimentos sociais latino-americanos”^[6] and “Ser zapatista a los 4 años.Socialización y subjetivación de niños tseltales”^[7] analyze agencies and resistance, childhood in defense of autonomy and territories, as well as children's participation in social movements. It should be noted that these participations are anchored in the positive assessment of personal and collective identity, as well as in the actions of children and women to build their territorial autonomy, the defense of their territory and natural resources. Proposals of collaborative, horizontal and reflective methodologies with children and young people are also presented that allow us to build spaces in which multiple spaces of dialogic enunciation are established, which include resistance and social transformation, while presenting the difficulties they face. expressed in the article: “Por que rimos das crianças?”^[8].

This dossier presents also a view on social, economic and cultural realities and contexts and emphasizes the agency of children and young people in resistance and survival strategies, concrete as well symbolic. Such social and political contexts are reviewed in the articles: “Juventudes étnicas universitarias, procesos organizativos y espacios de incidencia en Monterrey, México”^[9] and “Jóvenes indígenas y resignificaciones identitarias en la educación superior intercultural en México”^[10]. The articles “Subjetividades juveniles de la cultura callejera: participación y exclusión en Xalapa”^[11] and “Niñez indígena trabajadora migrante en contextos urbanos: participación, poder y resistencia”^[12] address childhood and their work in large cities, with children as participants in daily life in a posture of resistance. The experiences related to violence in its multiple dimensions are expressed in the article: “Habitando la escuela en contexto de violencia armada: negociaciones con su presencia”^[13].

We bring these reflections to the public, aware of the challenges and potential that the subject entails and the commitment we have with children and young people. Good Reading!