This volume explores and challenges the concept of vulnerability in the way it is applied and discussed in relation to children from a northwestern European perspective. While the concept of vulnerability has been significantly explored in relation to childhood and children's rights, this volume adds a fresh lens by adding a predominantly legal perspective. The predominantly legal perspectives and the way many of the authors are taking their departure point from the work of Martha Fineman bring a new third dimension to the discussion of the concept of vulnerability.

This interrogation of the concept of vulnerability is deployed in discussions that cover wide ranging issues relating to the environment, immigration, healthcare, education and climate change. Health is a focus of several chapters. While some of the chapters challenge the concept of vulnerability, others mainly work from more dominant interpretations of child vulnerability and some also bring in the perspective of the multidisciplinary field of childhood studies. The chapters represent a mixture of theoretical and empirical pieces. In the last chapter, some of the key threads running through the whole volume are brought together with some concluding reflections.

The theoretical concepts and the questions raised by many of the chapters included in this volume have the potential to contribute to further thinking in this area.