Performing Day Care Childhoods: Children as Actors of their Differential Care Arrangements

Research aims
Children’s positioning as actors in the Luxembourgian ECEC system is not only bound to single daycare settings, but individual care arrangements. This in mind, children in Luxembourg perform their own differing daycare realities. Based on 4-6 ethnographic case studies the PhD-project (embedded in the Luxembourgian CHILD-study) focuses on the interrelation between children’s positioning in daycare settings and their performing of individual care arrangements from a practice-analytic view aiming at exploring differences and potential inequalities of daycare in Luxembourg.
Relationship to previous research works
The study relates to research on differential care arrangements (Capizzano et al.; Loeb et al.; Lowe et al.) as well as to children’s agency emphasized in recent childhood sociology (Corsaro, James).
Theoretical and conceptual framework
Practice theory (Reckwitz, Schmidt), practice-analytic approaches to social inequality (Bourdieu, Lareau)
Paradigm, methodology and methods
Ethnography, actor-centered childhood sociology (Corsaro); family interviews and participant observation of contrastive daily schedules, settings and practices of 2-4-year-olds, 4-6 case studies
Ethical Considerations
Ethnographic research is dialogic in principle, based on establishing ongoing trustful partnerships with participants and being aware of symbolic power in adult-child-relationships
Main finding or discussion
The paper presents parts of two ‘thick portraits’ (referring to Geertz’ ‘thick descriptions’) of contrastive care arrangements. Focusing on differences in children's weekly schedules it shows how their positioning in daycare settings is intertwined with their individual care arrangements. As to children’s active participation, the portraits can be understood as an analytic surface showing the interplay between specific care arrangements, children’s positioning practices as well as differences between respective care arrangements.
Implications, practice or policy
The research aims at a child- and practice-centered view on social inequality in daycare systems.