We Make the Road by Walking: Challenging Conceptualisations of Leisure Time for Children in Poverty

In this article, we discuss a research project focusing on the ways in which children in poverty spend and experience their leisure time. We argue that the dominant conceptualisation of leisure time participation reduces poverty to a lack of social and cultural capital, marginalising poor children as passive objects of socialisation. Inspired by the interpretative paradigm of lifeworld orientation, three insights are identified throughout poor children's experiences, which include the following: (i) challenging taken‐for‐granted divisions of time; (ii) giving meaning to regimes of time as an ongoing learning process; and (iii) imagining a socially just future.