Home in Early Childhood Care and Education: Conceptualizations and Reconfigurations (Critical Cultural Studies of Childhood) 3031436946, 9783031436949

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CRITICAL CULTURAL STUDIES OF CHILDHOOD

Home in Early Childhood Care and Education Edited by Andrew Gibbons · Sonya Gaches · Sonja Arndt Mara Sapon-Shevin · Colette Murray Mathias Urban · Marek Tesar

Critical Cultural Studies of Childhood Series Editors

Marianne N. Bloch Department of Curriculum and Instruction University of Wisconsin-Madison Madison, WI, USA Beth Blue Swadener School of Social Transformation Arizona State University Tempe, AZ, USA

This series focuses on reframings of theory, research, policy, and pedagogies in childhood. A critical cultural study of childhood is one that offers a ‘prism’ of possibilities for writing about power and its relationship to the cultural constructions of childhood, family, and education in broad societal, local, and global contexts. Books in the series open up new spaces for dialogue and reconceptualization based on critical theoretical and methodological framings, including critical pedagogy; advocacy and social justice perspectives; cultural, historical, and comparative studies of childhood; and post-structural, postcolonial, and/or feminist studies of childhood, family, and education. The intent of the series is to examine the relations between power, language, and what is taken as normal/abnormal, good, and natural, to understand the construction of the ‘other,’ difference and inclusions/exclusions that are embedded in current notions of childhood, family, educational reforms, policies, and the practices of schooling. Critical Cultural Studies of Childhood will open up dialogue about new possibilities for action and research. Single-authored as well as edited volumes focusing on critical studies of childhood from a variety of disciplinary and theoretical perspectives are included in the series. A particular focus is in a reimagining and critical reflection on policy and practice in early childhood, primary, and elementary education. The series intends to open up new spaces for reconceptualizing theories and traditions of research, policies, cultural reasonings, and practices at all of these levels, in the United States, as well as comparatively.

Andrew Gibbons  •  Sonya Gaches Sonja Arndt Mara Sapon-Shevin Colette Murray  •  Mathias Urban Marek Tesar Editors

Home in Early Childhood Care and Education Conceptualizations and Reconfigurations

Editors Andrew Gibbons School of Education Auckland University of Technology Auckland, New Zealand

Sonya Gaches College of Education The University of Otago Dunedin, New Zealand

Sonja Arndt Graduate School of Education University of Melbourne Melbourne, VIC, Australia

Mara Sapon-Shevin Inclusive Education Syracuse University Syracuse, NY, USA

Colette Murray Department of Social Science, Law, and Education Technological University Dublin Dublin, Ireland

Mathias Urban Institute of Education Dublin City University Dublin, Ireland

Marek Tesar University of Auckland Auckland, New Zealand ISSN 2731-636X     ISSN 2731-6378 (electronic) Critical Cultural Studies of Childhood ISBN 978-3-031-43694-9    ISBN 978-3-031-43695-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43695-6 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover credit line: www.barbaraonearaartist.com This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Paper in this product is recyclable.

This collection of chapters is dedicated to those who collaborate, to those who create their own caravans and travel together through difficult terrain, inclement weather, plague, and challenging times but who keep the caravan moving forward through shared purpose and love. This book is also dedicated to the memory of Barbara O’Meara (1963-2023) who generously provided the cover image for this book. Barbara was an artist and activist, who worked continuously to give voice and bring attention to those who are marginalised in society, especially women and children. May she rest in peace.

Series Editors’ Preface

In this series on “Critical Cultural Studies of Childhood,” we have focused on transnational and critical studies of childhood and families, as well as educational places, spaces, and constructs. In this short preface, we highlight some of the contributions of this book as well as ways in which we think you, as reader, will find the book intellectually and educationally exciting. This collaboratively edited volume features the work of transnational scholars reflecting on ways that notions of home are constructed by dominant cultural assumptions and how early education based on those assumptions is experienced by minoritized cultures, immigrant families, and children in poverty. Further, the authors problematize conceptions of geographical, social, or emotional stability drawn from a westernized, imperial/colonial notion of the “good or normal” home. The editors, led by Andrew Gibbons, deconstruct the taken-for-granted and fixed notions of “home” and “school” as places of belonging and safety as well as connectedness for young children and their families. In various chapters, the authors question what it means for early childhood programs to be “homelike” and how, in many situations, that might be problematic; they also interrogate how home-lessness, conceptually and physically, plays into experiences of teachers, families, and children. Across the book, the authors draw on a rich and diverse set of theoretical and conceptual perspectives to highlight the many ways that educational literature, policies, and practice reify dominant notions of a classed, racialized, and colonial imaginary of home and home-school similarities. Contributors in this volume find hope in deconstructing not only the vii

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physical borders that geographically separate us but those that metaphorically continue to otherize and dehumanize those sitting on the other side. They complicate taken-for-granted constructs of home and unpack it as lived experience, metaphor, theory, and its policy-informing implications. Their use of the more than human in their framing of place and their call for a fluid, rhizomatic, and nomadic conception of home-school pushes us toward new critiques of what “is,” and opens spaces for fabricating more socially just policies and practices. Finally, they draw from a rich and nuanced range of settings/contexts and life experiences. A few of the questions raised in the book are: • What does it mean to call a place home? What does home-less mean? • How can home be both problematic and, at the same time, critical to ECCE and beyond? • How do families and educators understand and/or (co-)create the experience of home? • How do the experiences of migrant families and young immigrant children raise issues and contradictions to common sense understandings of home? • How do global migrations and borderlands experiences shape constructions of home and belonging? • When home is dangerous, denied, or multi-sited as with transborder communities, where is home? • What meanings do “homeland” and homeland security have for immigrant and asylum-seeking families? • What meanings do homeland security have for those whose homes and cultures are stigmatized, marginalized, or constantly at risk for being taken in their own country? In which ways do feelings of “belonging,” that the construct home suggests, travel across geographic places and conceptual spaces as well as time? • How do young children, their families, and educators build relationships based on activism, a sense of social justice, and upon a sense of home and cultural identities through strategic alliances, or in collaboration? • How would an ethics of hospitality and relationality toward others as well as notion of care and welcome rather than hostility or superiority/inferiority shift policy as well as practices?

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Varied theoretical perspectives are highlighted in almost every chapter in the book. Arndt, Gibbons, Guerrero and Gibbons, Tesar, and Urban draw on the work of Barad, Braidotti, Deleuze and Guattari, and Mouffe to highlight home as a blurred or fluid concept, and one that requires opening up to scrutiny and new possibilities. In the introductory chapter, Gibbons (p.  2) highlights the authors’ contributions by speaking of a nomadic unsettling that takes place throughout the book: Our sense of where home is and what home means to us—and could mean— shifts and moves with time, with experiences, and with new and unexplored possibilities. There is a nomadic unsettling as we engage with and dwell within these relations of home.

In addition, other contributors (e.g., Gaches, Habashi, Maldonado and Swadener, Murray, and Sapon-Shevin) focus on home and the constructed home-lessness of those who have fled their countries, and/or been displaced, colonized, and marginalized within their lands. They draw on work by Anzaldua, hooks, Freire, and Border Crit Theory. As readers see from these illustrations and will see throughout the book, the contributors push the boundaries of education and other fields as they unpack the common and taken-for-granted notion that “homes” are the same, and, in a romanticized fashion, always safe and nurturing. As with other books in this series, the authors destabilize and deepen the theoretical and conceptual understanding of childhoods, with policy and pedagogical implications. Madison, WI, USA Tempe, AZ, USA

Marianne N. Bloch Beth Blue Swadener

Acknowledgments

The editors would like to acknowledge Dr Sandy Farquhar for supporting the inception and production of this book, series editors Mimi Bloch and Beth Swadener, and Linda Braus and Sujatha Mani from the Springer support team.

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Contents

 Welcome to Home: An Introduction  1 Andrew Gibbons, Mara Sapon-Shevin, Sonya Gaches, Mathias Urban, Colette Murray, Marek Tesar, and Sonja Arndt  The Deconstruction of the Language of Home 25 Andrew Gibbons  Whose Home? Problematizing the Nature of “Homelike” in Early Childhood Education 43 Mara Sapon-Shevin  Home or Homelessness: A Diffractive Re-articulation of Teacher Otherness 61 Sonja Arndt Criminalization of the Right to Home for Palestinian Children 75 Janette Habashi  Home Is There: Borderlands, Belonging, and the Stories We Tell 95 Angeles Maldonado and Beth Blue Swadener  Theorizing Architectures of Home117 Marek Tesar xiii

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Contents

 The Things of Home: Histories, People, Stories, Belonging133 Sonya Gaches  Heart(h)less: Negative Visibility and Positive Invisibility: An Irish Travellers’ Tale151 Colette Murray Vagabonds Efficaces—Effectively Changing the World from a Non-space177 Mathias Urban Conclusion: Reconceptualizing Early Childhood Care and Education and Home with Love199 Margarita Ruiz Guerrero and Andrew Gibbons Index211

Notes on Contributors

Sonja  Arndt is Senior Lecturer in Early Childhood Education at Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne, Australia. Sonya Gaches  is Senior Lecturer in Education at the University of Otago College of Education, New Zealand. Andrew Gibbons  is Professor in the School of Education at Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand. Margarita  Ruíz  Guerrero  is Assistant Professor of Early Childhood Education at Western Washington University, United States. Janette  Habashi  is a Human Relations Professor at the University of Oklahoma, United States. Angeles Maldonado  is a human rights scholar-activist and author in the United States. She holds a Ph.D. in Education, a Master’s in Public Administration, and a Bachelor of Science in Justice Studies. She is the CEO of Ybarra Maldonado Law Group. Colette Murray  is a Lecturer in Early Childhood Education and Care at the Technological University Dublin, Ireland. Mara  Sapon-Shevin  is Professor of Inclusive Education at Syracuse University, United States.

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Beth Blue Swadener  is Professor Emerita of Justice Studies and of Social and Cultural Pedagogy in the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State Universyit, United States. Marek  Tesar  is Professor of Childhood Studies and Early Childhood Education, as well as Associate Dean International in the Faculty of Education and Social Work, at University of Auckland, New Zealand. Mathias  Urban  is Desmond Chair of Early Childhood Education and Director of the Early Childhood Research Centre at Dublin City University, Ireland.

List of Figures

The Things of Home: Histories, People, Stories, Belonging Fig. 1 Fig. 2 Fig. 3

Childhood artefacts unpacked and on display Dolls and Toys as links to narratives of relationships and belonging. (Note. Personal photographs from family albums and more recently in new home) This Grandmother’s offered hand-knitted lovey to her grandchild

135 143 147

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Welcome to Home: An Introduction Andrew Gibbons, Mara Sapon-Shevin, Sonya Gaches, Mathias Urban, Colette Murray, Marek Tesar, and Sonja Arndt

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.” Lewis Carroll

A. Gibbons (*) Auckland University of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand e-mail: [email protected] M. Sapon-Shevin Inclusive Education, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected] S. Gaches College of Education, The University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Gibbons et al. (eds.), Home in Early Childhood Care and Education, Critical Cultural Studies of Childhood, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43695-6_1

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Reflections on Home: Escaping the Master Welcome to a book about “home” in early childhood care and education (ECCE). Home. A word that appears at times, perhaps for many readers, so seemingly simple and obvious—its meaning seems to be clear, unambiguous, settled. Perhaps it is easy to shut one’s eyes and to think of home—to visualize all the imagery, the metaphors and the experiences that have become as intimate and familiar as this thing called “home”. To be settled could be considered a key dimension or characteristic of what home means. Yet, in these pages you will find many different thoughts, theories, observations and experiences of the complexity of home for many communities of ECCE. Home is neither clear nor unambiguous, and as Murray explores in chapter “Heart(h)less: Negative-­ visibility and Positive-­ invisibility an Irish Travellers’ Tale”, for many communities home has quite a different meaning in relation to the idea of being settled. Home, we believe, is not a settled concept. Home is an essentially contested concept that attracts significant scholarship and enduring disagreement (Meers, 2021). As such, home is a concept that requires unsettling. More than this, for many communities, home is a deeply problematic M. Urban Institute of Education, Dublin City University, Dublin, Ireland e-mail: [email protected] C. Murray Department of Social Science, Law, and Education, Technological University Dublin, Dublin, Ireland e-mail: [email protected] M. Tesar University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand e-mail: [email protected] S. Arndt Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia e-mail: [email protected]

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concept that exposes not just a diversity of beliefs and experiences, but also histories of colonization revealing the present, and some possible futures, of oppression and discrimination—as well as immense and radical possibilities for openness and care. These possibilities are played out in the dialogue between Alice and Humpty Dumpty that frames this introduction. Alice’s question reflects a concern for meaning. She’s disrupted by Humpty Dumpty’s confidence with meaning, and perhaps inquisitive as to the implications of Humpty appearing to reject any authority with regards the wisdom of words. Can home mean whatever one wants it to mean? Humpty, taking a seemingly radical relativistic position, argues that home can mean anything to anyone, and that words can (and from his perspective should) be subject to mastery. Mastery, as a kind of sovereignty, is of particular interest here. Home, as a word that can be mastered, is a word that has, in many configurations, been mastered to mean the mastered dwelling, the property of a master. Home becomes, in this way, a device that gathers together and divides. Home creates a “we” or “us”, and a “them”. Humpty Dumpty’s rebuttal to Alice regarding the mastery of words is a reminder then to take seriously the meanings and experiences of the word “home”. We believe that it is vitally important to understand that home, as both a construct and a lived experience, is complexly connected to ECCE. In this book, each author engages with the complexity of home with a view to opening up meanings, challenging universal or assumed meanings, and thinking through the experiences of home for diverse communities. In this collective task, there is a concern with reconceptualizing home: to reveal, engage with, and rethink the manifestations of mastery that predict, prescribe and predominate the homes of many individuals and communities. In exploring home, we recognize the deep and broad connections of home: to place, to dwelling, to property; to the domestic, the family, the abode, and to accommodation. In their care and attention to many different histories, meanings and experiences of home, each author dwells differently in these relations of home. This dwelling in relations of home engages with a nomadic theorization of home. Our sense of where home is and what home means to us—and could mean—shifts and moves with time, with experiences, and with new and unexplored possibilities. There is a nomadic unsettling as we engage with and dwell within these relations of home. As nomadic theorizations (see Braidotti, 2013, 2014, 2019; Jones et al., 2016; Mouffe, 1994) of home, each chapter recognizes and disrupts essentializations of home, and

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of the static and settled figure of the human subject whose identity is more or less designed into and for certain privileged configurations of home. In working through the “hybridization and nomadization” (Mouffe, 1994: 110) of home, each chapter is concerned with questioning the matter of home as more than metaphor constrained by the limits of discourse (Braidotti, 2019). Following Semetsky (2008: vii) on nomadic journeys into the disciplinary fields of education, the “forever-fixed and eternal” meanings can only appear to abide in educational institutions. The uncontainable, uncontrollable, movement of the nomadic (Semestsky, 2008) “occupies a variety of possible subject positions, at different places (spatially) and at different times (temporally), across a multiplicity of constructions of the self” (Vandenbroeck et al., 2009: 211). In this movement, recognition and disruption are processes that resonate with Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) provocation to explore “spaces and ways of thinking that open new directions and routes in research practices and resist codified or normalized ways of thinking and acting” (Pacini-Ketchabaw et al., 2011: 26). In a nomadic research act, researchers would not necessarily follow already existing guidelines that define what counts as good research practice, but we would act toward the creation of new ways to confront dominant research practices and move toward seeking new potentials … asking, for example: Where else could this go? What kinds of new encounters are possible? What new “things” can race be linked to and, as a result, transformed and rearranged into something new? (Pacini-Ketchabaw et al., 2011: 26)

The privileged configurations of home are a central point of concern in each chapter. Each chapter at the same time recognizes the “minorities” of home (Braidotti, 2013). “The minority is the dynamic or intensive principle of change in nomadic theory, whereas the heart of the (phallogocentric) Majority is static, self-replicating and sterile” (Braidotti, 2013: 344). The authors of this book take home seriously and invite serious consideration of home within the broad and global, local and deep, contexts of early childhood care and education. Whether you are a teacher, a parent, a manager, a teacher educator, a researcher, an advocate, or a policy maker, these opening thoughts on home invite you to cross the threshold into this collection on home. We welcome you.

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The Predominance of Home The idea of home is a predominant concept and experience in the development of contemporary ECCE philosophies and approaches. That predominance is evident in curriculum strategies and approaches, materials and resources, activities and lessons and interactions, and in the architecture and design of the physical spaces of an early childhood centre. Home is both the explicit attention to learning about home, and the tacit experiences of home that make up the environment. But home is still more than this. Home, as a predominant experience, both constructs and connects children’s private and public lives in subtle and silent ways. The silence of home makes it no less powerful as a knowledge that guides communities and governments in their rationales for the life of the young child and for those that are assigned responsibilities for the young child—responsibilities often referred to in terms of care, learning, development and education. Home as a predominant concept contributes to the diverse social, cultural, historical and political practices of ECCE. Home reveals abiding myths, meaningful narratives, and productive subjectivities for each child and adult. Home reveals complex relationships between governments, landowners, property developers, architects and communities (Lewis et al., 2018). Home intersects with the complexity of matter in the world. Take for example the meaning and experience of home in relation to the study and application of electricity, computation, and fossil fuels (and, and, and). Home also intersects with knowledge. Consider for example apparent advances in public health and medicine (see for instance Burch et al., 2014) and what they mean for the study of home. As life expectancies alter, so too do expectations about the meaning and experience of home; and as health practices alter, so too do the functions and experiences of the home alter in a myriad of explicit and subtle ways. The arts also provide an understanding of the complexity of home. In poetry, the aesthetics of home are experienced as a tension between belonging and loss, “broken by incoherent words” (Compton, 2007: 16). Through the arts, home offers up many subjectivities, from the citizen whose “generic” dreams of home determine their own currency in relation to the economic progress of the nation (Turner, 2007: 81), to the “homeboy” for whom that same home becomes an absurdity (Warner, 2007: 70).

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While this book cannot hope to engage exhaustively with the fullness of these intersections and interconnections, what we would like to highlight here is their generative immensity. We invite ECCE communities to follow their own lines of inquiry, and to be open to the complex ways in which their dynamic and ever-changing worlds bring new conceptualizations and understandings, and lead to new experiences of home. Each chapter in this book provides glimpses of this openness. These different perspectives and applications of home highlight the complexity of home, and the benefits of reconceptualizing home in its meaning and practice. In this book, we invite the amplification of the concept of home with an openness to home as a diverse, dynamic and complex concept and experience. As editors of this collection, we share a view that there are many voices to hear on this seemingly so familiar (for some) and yet so wonderfully and sometimes even frighteningly strange word. ECCE takes place within the context of Global Capitalism. Global Capitalism is very clearly and unambiguously concerned with ECCE. With the growth of early childhood education, driven in part by a globalization of the early learning agenda (see for instance OECD’s Starting Strong series), the young child is increasingly likely to attend an ECCE institution. More than this, many children have become the object of government policy because they are not attending an ECCE institution and are, as such, believed to be missing out on the benefits of such attendance. The institutionalization of learning and teaching, and the structuring of education systems to produce particular kinds of graduates has contributed to the characterizations of homes in relation to the educational system. Policies concerned with increasing attendance of target groups increasingly emphasize that these benefits mitigate against, and/or redress, systemic inequities, and at the same time contribute to better adult outcomes—in other words, to better communities. ECCE is strategized as better for the child in order to govern the child. The child at home is a concern for this approach to government. A home in many communities is a place of learning occupations, responsibilities and relationships (see for instance Metge, 2015). In a global capitalist system, this privileging of home is a problem that must be solved—for instance pathologized as “condoned truancy” (see for instance Gibbons, 2007) in order to bring the home into line with the functions of the governance of the child. Without a home, children can also be regarded as a risk (Boyden, 2015) to both themselves and their communities. The home is, in this sense, not simply protection from the public gaze, it becomes the

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policing of the child. Yet home is a place that some children must escape from (both the family home and the institutional home). Living on the street, being homeless, is safer for some children (Boyden, 2015). Hence children who are at home and children who are not at home become increasingly visible as risks to society—determined by assumptions about the appropriateness and the functions of the home. With increases in ECCE attendance comes an associated decrease elsewhere. Children will be spending less time in their wider communities, and less time in their homes (Bronfenbrenner, 2005). Part of the policy logic of this trade-off is that these communities and homes are believed to be more or less undesirable places for children to grow and to learn— undesirable that is, when compared to the desirability of a quality ECCE institution. For policy makers, ECCE can mitigate against the effect of home and to a certain extent replace approved or desired functions of home in terms of a child’s early years—including the years often referred to as the “first thousand days” in developmental literature. ECCE institutions are likely to employ the concept of home throughout their curriculum and daily operations, for example creating a homelike environment, incorporating items from children’s homes into dramatic play, communicating with children’s homes, etc. Somewhat ironically, or perhaps as an act of balancing, curricula attend more to the experience of home as the child spends less and less time at home. This perceived irony creates a context and backdrop for this edited collection. Home appears as both a problem and a solution. As such, home is a critical concept to explore and engage with—as a critical concept, what are its meanings and its experiences, in what ways might these experiences and meanings be commensurable (or incommensurable), and what values and views inform these experiences and meanings? The nature of these questions speaks to a key dimension of this book—that of openness. In this book we are developing a scholarship of home that is active, practical and affective. We do not see this scholarship as neutral, objective, distanced reflection and theorizations of home. The purpose here is to engage critically with the responsibilities and potentials within early childhood communities in relation to experiences of feeling at, being at, and understanding, complex concepts of home. A reconceptualization of the idea of home contributes to the many and diverse physical and conceptual spaces that intersect with, and in, early childhood communities.

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The Past, Present and Future of Home The third decade of the twenty-first century began with a global pandemic. The precarity of life and the extremes of social, cultural and political problems took on new global proportions. Yet at the same time, these extremes reiterated enduring precarities and the failure of governments, communities and education systems, to reconceptualize education and care. Durnová (2020) observes that “staying at home” was the most prevalent approach to national pandemic responses and as such reiterates a particular discourse of the privileges of the private home. The “lockdown home” is assumed to be a space of safety and security, familiarity and identity, nurture and recovery (Byrne, 2020). Yet, Durnová (2020) suggests, the lockdown policy also revealed the myth of the safety of home, pointing to significant increases in domestic violence, and stigmatization of vulnerable communities. For Durnová these trends are made more visible during the pandemic and have therefore precipitated an urgency for wide public attention and debate regarding the construct and experience of home. For this collection of chapters on home, written in the time of the Covid-19 pandemic, new complexities and challenges inform our understanding of the concept of home. As educational institutions closed the doors to their physical spaces, we have observed dramatic changes in the lives of parents and caregivers, and dramatic changes in the functions of the home. For instance, distinctions between home and school are increasingly reconfigured and/or reconceptualized: • Many more young children are now being cared for and educated in a home—in many situations the home is now required to fulfil functions previously attended to by ECCE institutions. • Homes, schools and early childhood centres must re-invent themselves as new restrictions and guidelines are developed for adult and child interaction—in early childhood centres the meaning of homelike is affected by regulations regarding social distancing and physical contact; in homes, spaces are re-designated as home office spaces. The global pandemic is however neither new in terms of its pandemic-­ ness, nor in terms of the impact that it has on the experience of home. Reconfigurations of dwellings highlight the importance of understanding urbanization, industrialization, and colonization and the experience and understanding of home. This includes the very emergence of

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twentieth-­century policies for universal early childhood education that annex ECCE into the technological functions of the wider education system, releasing parents from the need to keep a presence at home during the day (see for instance Goodman, 1975), damaging or destroying the familial “outer leaves” (Reedy, 2003: 61). For the policy makers of modernity, the home has been a mechanism for progress. “The idea of a home (the People’s Home) was deliberately used in the Swedish context during the postwar years to construct an individuality that would fit industrial society” (Hultqvist & Dahlberg, 2001: 12). Home, then, can also contribute to the production of the employable and exploitable subject. Yet at the same time home operates as a Romantic notion that protects the subject from industrialization. Here there is a connection between home and nature in an industrial society. Changing configurations of housing become a concern on the grounds that there is less place for nature at home and less place for learning about and in, and caring for nature (Campbell, 2012). Hence, home is imbued with essentialized romantic qualities which are believed to save the child and childhood from industrialized, time-poor, violence-rich communities and societies (Louv, 2010). Here, home protects an idealized and privileged past that is disrupted by urbanization and industrialization. As the stable world of the small town has become absorbed into an ever-­ shifting suburbia, children are growing up in a different kind of environment. Urbanization has often reduced the extended family to a nuclear one with only two adults, and the friendly neighbourhood  - where it has not decayed into an urban or rural slum - has withered to a small circle of friends. (Bronfenbrenner, 2005: 202)

In the Romantic turn, home then produces and becomes responsible for a child’s growth. Dominant norms of child development determine the value of home. These values guide advocates for child development to suggest that government policies of increased attendance in ECCE are damaging to child development. Keep in mind, however, that those policies emerged, in part, as a response to the problem of removing working-­ class children from the labour market. Getting working-class children out of the factories and into a family home was not tenable. Industrialists like Robert Owen recognized this problem—hence the establishment of New Lanark (Lascarides & Hinitz, 2000). For the working classes, the home could be a place of work—and long before the pandemic home office of

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2020 and 2021. Marx observed changing modes of production impacted on the family by producing new roles out of the home that then impact on the role of the home. Working in a factory is imagined as potentially more fulfilling and rewarding as working in the home. Domestic industry was responsible for all kinds of “abominations” (Marx, 1969: 502), in which women and children are “material for exploitation” (Marx, 1969: 502) suffering poor health, working in a home for up to 16 hours, in poor conditions. “When women work at home with the aid of their own children (this being a ‘home’ in the modern sense of a single hired room, often an attic room), conditions are, if possible, worse” (Marx, 1969: 504). Here, homes are “bloodsucking establishments where they [children] are kept at work simply in order to get through the task set them by their half-starved mother” (1969: 505). Marx laments: “… the land in which these model families have their homes is the model country of Christian Europe!” (1969: 506). As argued above, the home is a central and enduring device in Romantic thinking. Froebel developed a model educational institution beginning with the parents and differentiated parental roles around the construct of the home. He explained the roles of the mother and father as supporting the child’s developmental progress. The mother, in the protective space of the home, creates in the child a passion for exploring the world, which the father then furnishes: In his instructions to parents and kindergartners Froebel told them to be aware of their own life from its early stages, to search into the child’s life so as to establish its present phase of development and its requirements, and to examine the child’s environment in order to see how far it meets his needs. (Lilley, 1967: 24)

During the mid-twentieth century in Aotearoa New Zealand, Grey’s advocacy for play establishes the organization of an early childhood centre to maximize play experiences and recognizes an explicit role for the home in design of the ECCE centre space and curriculum. Grey explains that the organization of the space is arranged in such a way as to resemble the “outline of a house” (1964: 131). In this space children are encouraged to engage in family play that “resembles the everyday occupations in the home” (Grey, 1964: 131). At the same time, and somewhat ironically, Grey recognizes the benefits of observing the child’s play in the early childhood centre for observing the child’s experience and understanding

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of home, suggesting that the “workings of New Zealand families can be glimpsed from the children’s behaviour at the family corner or with the dolls. Concerns over feeding, toileting, being dirty, good manners can be heard and often in the same tone of voice as that used at home. One can even sometimes pick the head of the house!” (Grey, 1964: 133). In the study of families in 1960s Aotearoa New Zealand, Ritchie and Ritchie question the design of the home. “The Modern New Zealand house is not a technological wonder but it is basically a machine for living, one that works well enough in spite of poor design or other functional inadequacies. It does so mainly because it and those who live in it are managed by the Mother” (Ritchie & Ritchie, 1970: 76). Before the massification of the early childhood sector, this image of the mother was also central to the production of the school-ready child (Farquhar, 2010) and the home was where this production occurred. Attitudes with regards parenting styles altered in relation to the configuration of the home space (Ritchie & Ritchie, 1970). When researching mothers’ views of the rules of the house, Ritchie and Ritchie (1970: 78) report mothers as explaining “They had worked… for the house and for what it contained, and the children had to learn to respect the property at home… if they were ever to learn respect for property in general.” In Begg’s research of childhood in the 1970s, the conditions of home that impact on a child could be sustaining for the child’s experiences and development regardless of apparent privilege. Begg observes: But one of the remarkable features of a family home is that it flourishes, or not, altogether apart from its material resources. In the course of my work as a doctor I have been asked to visit many homes. Some of the happiest have been poor in the eyes of the world. Some of the wealthiest have been impersonal and unhappy. Sometimes if things are too easy for a well endowed couple, they miss the stimulus and reward of a struggle. Two young people who are prepared to make cupboards and sew curtains and to scrimp and save will enjoy their home the more for their efforts they have put into it. Both health and happiness must be worked for, they cannot be bought. (Begg, 1974: 20)

In contrast, Kociumbas (1997) argues that home is a mechanism that protects the child not just from the world, but protects their status and privilege. Home as a symbol of status is manifest on the inside and out, and in the relationship that the home has to the homes around it. Home

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operates as a determination of civilized-ness, it provides evidence of rights and opportunities, it is necessary for certain forms of participation, it is both place that protects you from the surveillance of state, and is a place the state may put you (see for instance Kociumbas, 1997), whether that be as a ward of the state in a home for a child or children, or as a family provided with a state house where public policy provides for housing (Parsons, 1995). At the turn of the twenty-first century, new patterns and demands for labour produced new configurations of movements between dwellings for employment mobility across multiple organizations, impacting family homes and family dynamics (Beare, 2001). Families, encouraged by full ECCE participation policies, choose (often multiple) services to suit the demands of their employment. Yet ECCE services are established as a necessary constant during early childhood, for the benefit of the child’s learning and development. In this configuration, the home continues to be a problem to solve through education policy. One key dimension of the development of early childhood education provisions is a concern for mitigating against the effects of the home—ECCE gives children the “head start” that is not possible at home. The home is a risky place for learning because it may lack the approved educational resources. These resources include other learners, an approved programme of instruction, materials, qualified and experienced teachers, and, Beare (2001) argues, a place to identify with as a learner. With such advocacy for children’s participation in the institutional environments of ECCE, the growth of a diversity of services at the same time contributed to an enduring twentieth-century discourse of developmental deficit. In other words, some children’s home lives did not present as playful, caring and stimulating enough. Services emerged to respond to this perceived deficit, including mobile services that would bring play to the child. For instance, children in rural areas with limited access may be provided with a service operating out of a vehicle (see for instance Kennedy et al., 1991). The observation of the limitations or deficits of some homes for the child’s early years contributes then to wide ranging responses in terms of advocacy, the development of services, and the development of policy. In this way, whole communities can be policed through wide ranging policies that impact on the experience of home and the experience of the functions of education in relation to the role of the home (Murray, 2013). These policies draw on an understanding of the ideals of home. In guiding policy, the social sciences make sense of home as a human

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experience and give sense to home within the horizons of humanism. An understanding of home is essential to the studies of economics, law, politics, history, art and design, geography, archaeology, anthropology, philosophy, and so on and so forth. They all have a stake in home, and all look and feel the way they do on account of home. These discourses of home contribute to the philosophy and practice of ECCE. This contribution has at times been implied, at others associated with home through concepts of family, and at others explicitly identified as a key construct for ECCE. The concept of home provides one element of distinction for early childhood centres. Gonzalez-Mena sets this up as a key reflective question: should the centre “be as much like a home as possible for each child, or should it purposely be different” (Gonzalez-Mena, 2008: 262)? As argued above, while the family home may be part of the perceived problem, the family home is also part of the solution. For instance, homes are also understood as a solution to the problem of meeting the demands for building early childhood centres (Beare, 2001). The growth of home-­ based care is regarded as more than an alternate philosophy for parents as choosers; it is regarded as a solution to the problem of realizing full attendance goals. Home-based care, at the same time, is a solution for critics of the quality of ECCE—particularly in terms of service size and adult to child ratios. Home schooling is regarded as offering a challenge to the limitations of schooling (Beare, 2001), home-based ECCE is similarly offered as a solution to the limitations of ECCE.  Home-based approaches to early childhood education are explained as natural and functional; providing education and care in which children do not experience a dissonance between centre and home, and the family are more involved (Shearer & Shearer, 2009). So ECCE is constructed as a response to the failure of home and home is constructed as a response to the failure of ECCE.  This complex and somewhat absurd paradox is further deepened in observing the connections and disconnections between home and ECCE centre. Places of learning are regarded as artificially distinct from communities and from homes (Beare, 2001). At the same time, the idea of a partnership with home constructs responsibilities for sharing and understands that the effectiveness of education is in some way an outcome of the effectiveness of the communications and the shared understanding between the centre and the home, the teachers and the family (Beare, 2001; González et al., 2006). What are the effects of these shifts, reconfigurations and reconceptualizations relative to how we conceptualize and experience home?

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Theoretical, Philosophical and Political Movements and Inspirations The chapters in this collection engage with enduring and new conceptualizations and experiences of home. The collection invites teachers, centre communities, policy makers, curriculum designers and academics to take a step back from and critically question the concept of home. The purpose is not to reject home but rather to recognize the complexity of a concept that is often taken for granted. Taking for granted the concept of home runs the risk of marginalizing and/or colonizing the very diverse experiences and understandings of home. Attending critically to the concept of home is then an engagement in the politics of home. The United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) refers to home in Article 16: 1. No child shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his or her privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to unlawful attacks on his or her honour and reputation. 2. The child has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks. This fleeting reference to home belies a very significant global experience of colonization and an attack on the homes of many communities. The type of house that a child calls home can be an indicator of discrimination, stigma, deprivation, exploitation and marginalization (see for instance Reedy, 2003). The discourse of home can be an indicator of similar effects. For instance, and ironically considering the Romantic turn, discourses of property and ownership undermined senses of home. The connection to home is also colonized by discourses of place. Indigenous knowledge is “place based and does not make assumptions about its own generalizability” (Stewart, 2020: 34). The colonization of home undermines relationships to place and to the ways in which communities and societies engage in and with the world. The colonizing home colonizes place through its very generalizability in terms of not just its aesthetic design, but also its design as a thing that is disconnected from place and history, and its design as a thing to be owned. The Māori sense of belonging to particular places, captured in the word ‘tūrangawaewae’ or home ground, is neither cancelled out nor reversed by

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legal ownership in Pākehā terms. To understand oneself as originating from this land, belonging to these hills, valleys, rivers and coasts, and as kin to all their inhabitant, is a powerful antithesis to the individualistic notion of the human being that has overtaken the world along with Euro-American culture under globalization. (Stewart, 2020: 35)

In the colonization of Aotearoa, the New Zealand Government imported particular ideas and functions of home. These ideas and functions draw upon idea of property and ownership (Howard, 1996). Urbanization redirected and amplified these ideas and functions. Government policies included what was known as “pepper potting”, an insidious assimilationist approach to disrupting traditions of home for Māori (Hill, 2012; Kutia, 2019). Through urbanization, the structures of home impact on the organization of the family (Howard, 1996). The urban family home is then extended into the spaces of the ECCE childhood centre. In this way, the child’s experiences of community and neighbourhood are reconfigured (Bronfenbrenner, 2005). Meers (2021: 4) argues that a “single account of the concept of home will never be settled upon and nor should it be”. There is no universal construct of home. Not only is home a diverse metaphor for physical spaces for living, it is also a diverse metaphor for relationships to and with the world including, in the language of early childhood curriculum, people places and things (Ministry of Education, 2017). The history of the early childhood centre and the history of home intersect with and impact on each other. Early childhood philosophies and theories are similarly complexly intertwined with home. At times these philosophies will speak to a particular understanding of home, a home-focused purpose for the philosophy and curriculum, while at other times, a particular understanding of home will generate the particularities of the philosophy and theory. In Aotearoa New Zealand, the curriculum document Te Whāriki (2017) witnesses and resists neoliberal and neo-colonial practices that govern the child—at the early childhood centre and at home. This occurs both in the non-prescriptive nature of its framework, which creates opportunities for various interpretations and responses to the economic and political contexts, and in its groundedness in bicultural philosophies (Tesar, 2015). Te Whāriki and its development reflect the spirit of Te Tiriti o Waitangi in the collaborative bicultural partnership that characterized its development, as well as its focus, which is unique to the context of Aotearoa New Zealand (May, 2013). Its flexibility and openness can be

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seen as reflecting the non-compulsory early childhood sector which has been struggling for recognition within the wider field of education. Yet it also pushes boundaries and opens up spaces for “education”, “care”, and also “home” to enter this space. Furthermore, it opens up spaces for new theoretical frameworks and readings, perhaps more so than in other areas of education (Tesar & Arndt, 2020; Malone et  al., 2020). May (2013) claims that there are many stories of Te Whāriki, reflected in its development, and which continue “from the ground up” in  local communities and early childhood services, as a weaving of Western and Māori philosophies about the child, childhood, education, values, home and the world. Rose (1999: 123) argues that children and childhood are “the most intensively governed sector of personal existence”. This is reflected in the curriculum framework Te Whāriki as it governs childhoods through its bicultural weaving. While the neoliberal context positions the child as a competitive, individualistic consumer subject, Te Wha ̄riki resists this by positioning the child as a biculturally aware, relational, non-materialist, collectivist subject. Both discourses exercise forms of governmentality, albeit in very different ways, and produce very different kinds of subjects. The specific bicultural agenda of Te Wha ̄riki, as an instrument of governance based in Māori and socio-cultural philosophies, has been subverted by the impacts of neoliberalism and neo-colonialism. Neoliberalism and neo-colonialisms are thus “connected assemblages [that] allow us to rethink and open up early childhood research practices that attempt to pay attention to colonial pastpresent” (Pacini-Ketchabaw et al., 2014: 40). While, as claimed above, ECCE has altered the manifestations, functions and experiences of home, it is important to recognize that home precedes ECCE, and so the wider study of home contributes to the conditions for, the functions of, and experiences of ECCE. In that sense, this book advocates for the study of home as a rich thread of the curriculum to weave into the planned and spontaneous events, experiences, and interactions of the ECCE community. While the chapters in this book are not designed to lead curriculum interventions, they offer ideas and ways of thinking that can contribute to an ECCE centre community’s curriculum. For instance, through chapters exploring narratives of home, attention to the diversity of narratives, and to each child’s narratives, can be recognized and engaged with. The task of this book is to continue the tradition of reconceptualist work in early childhood through attention to the concept and experiences of home. We take home to be a concept and experiences worth reconceptualist attention. This attention is warranted and

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productive because home as a concept and as an experience is very political and philosophical, in ways that shape and are shaped by early childhood policy and practice, and by early childhood centre communities. The authors in this book take care to observe and theorize, without reification or essentialization, a very critical element in ECCE. The work to be done on home necessarily engages with the possibility that even an insistence of the very existence, importance and relevance of a notion of home can become an imposition. This imposition is recognized by Ferdinand Deligny (1970), a radical French educator, who invites the vagabonds efficacies, embracing nomadic ways of knowing, being and doing. Home is affective. By this we mean, while there might be many understandings and definitions and histories of home, there are also many feelings and senses and emotions of home. In this book we assemble a caravan of chapters. The idea of a caravan organizes the chapters playfully, as a metaphor through which creative and caring thought and practice is engaged, and seriously, as a metaphor that challenges the politics of home as a colonizing mechanism that has marginalized, silenced, exploited and frequently exterminated cultural and social ways of being and knowing that are not tied to fixed notions of property, land, material, space and social structures. The caravan is emblematic. Each chapter explores ways of being and thinking that share an interest in the notion of home. The chapters in this book offer multiple lenses and approaches to make sense of home as a conceptual space that operates in many complex and often-interrelated ways—for instance as intellectual space, as built environment, as disciplinary technology, and as threshold. The chapters employ a mix of theoretical and storied/narrative approaches that engage with ideas of home. This approach recognizes that powerful theorizations of home are particularly evident in the stories that we are told, and that we tell. In a sense, we acknowledge that all theories tell a story about home. Our approach to the book is to invite powerful stories that engage the reader in ongoing, shared and active reconceptualizations of the meaning of home for early childhood communities.

Chapter Overview Chapters “The Deconstruction of the Language of Home” and “Whose Home? Problematizing the Nature of ‘Homelike’ in Early Childhood Education” challenge the concept “homelike”. In chapter “The

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Deconstruction of the Language of Home” Andrew Gibbons explores the task of “making-home-like” as an impossible task for an early childhood teacher. Using Derrida’s (2000) deconstruction of hospitality, the chapter explores the idea of home. Deconstruction operates here as a task of “restlessness” in questioning the “conditions of discourse” (Vismann, 2005: 8) that reveals what is not said, what is made unwelcome, and what is critical to the possibilities of talking about home. Through Derrida (2000) we become interested in how an idea of home makes the politics of early childhood education possible. Mara Sapon-Shevin asks “whose home?” in chapter “Whose Home? Problematizing the Nature of ‘Homelike’ in Early Childhood Education”. Many early childhood educators speak to the goal of making EC centres “homelike”. Presumably, this invocation of home is intended to conjure warmth, safety and familiarity. The conjectured hope is that children will feel as comfortable in the early childhood centre as they are at home. But several problematic assumptions are embedded in this metaphor of home. First, it posits a homogenized home, as though all children’s homes are the same, and therefore that the same kinds of structures and policies will make all children feel at home. Second, for some children, their home is not a place of love or safety; perhaps our goal might need to be making the EC centre very different from their home. Chapter “Whose Home? Problematizing the Nature of ‘Homelike’ in Early Childhood Education” problematizes descriptions of early childhood environments as homelike, bringing to bear understandings of the visibility/invisibility of differences and conceptions of safety. The experience of otherness is related to home in chapter “Home or Homelessness: A Diffractive Re-­articulation of Teacher Otherness”. Sonja Arndt observes the effects of contemporary migratory shifts in terms of global and local impacts. Relational treatments of the Other in ECCE settings affect conceptions of home and are driven by underlying attitudes and orientations towards Otherness, familiarity, and the self, where home may become seen as an inner sense. Theorized through Kristeva’s (1991) notion that it is only when we recognize that all of us are foreigners within, the chapter offers a critical entry point towards rethinking attitudes of openness and acceptance to and of the Other. Recognizing that “the foreigner lives within us” presents a humbling and hopeful disruption to expectations and strategies in ECCE. In chapter “Criminalization of theRight to Homefor Palestinian Children”, Janette Habashi reveals that the concept of home in the Palestinian context is not necessarily associated with socioeconomic class

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or income. Throughout history Palestinians have enjoyed different styles and types of homes. The types of home range from mobile domiciles which are associated with Bedouin communities, to the more traditionally built homes made with stones. The concept of a Palestinian home has been challenged over the years due to its intertwined nature with politics. In 1948, the Israel colonization resulted in the expulsion of 70% of the Palestinian inhabitants from their homes. This resulted in the majority of the displaced Palestinians settling into refugee camps in anticipation of going back to their homes. These acts of expulsion continue to this day, albeit in a slightly different form. Expulsion is now associated with the destruction of homes under the guise of improper building permits or to appropriate the space for the purpose of building Israeli settlements. Chapter “Criminalization of theRight to Homefor Palestinian Children” discusses the different Israeli attempts of destroying Palestinian homes and its impact on ECCE. Immigrant experiences of home are the focus in chapter “Home Is There: Borderlands, Belonging, and the Stories We Tell”. Angeles Maldonado and Beth Blue Swadener pose two questions. What does it mean to call a place home? What does it mean to belong? Immigrant families and youth in the United States exist in a precarious zone of indistinction, in an imaginary space, sin tierra en cuál sembrar nuestras raices. This is what living in the borderlands feels like. It is like living in a house without foundation. Confined by shifting walls and borders, immigrant families exist and live in a mythological land of the here and there. Como dice la India Maria, somos ni de aqui ni de alla. This is our home, and it has been fabricated for us. It is a wavering zone that has been intentionally constructed to make the other feel unwelcomed. Chapter “Home Is There: Borderlands, Belonging, and the Stories We Tell” focuses discussion on the ways in which immigrant youth and their families experience and imagine home and interrogate how and why certain home realities are neglected, unrecognized, or silenced. Drawing from autoethnography, conversational interviews with immigrant children and their parents, and Border Crit Theory, the chapter questions fixed notions of home and advocates for the creation of more fluid, transformative, and inclusive spaces of belonging. Marek Tesar conceptualizes an architecture of home in chapter “Theorizing Architectures of Home”. The chapter works with concepts of belonging and being in the world, as recorded in stories of the youngest children and their families coming to Aotearoa New Zealand. Utilizing

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theoretical thinking around space and place, the chapter analyses data collected by early childhood children, their parents and teachers. The narratives of home and homelessness, longing, transition, opportunity and missing are theorized through the philosophical thinking around home and attempt to present architectures of home in both a literal and a metaphorical sense. Histories, people, stories, belonging are the focus in chapter “The Things of Home: Histories, People, Stories, Belonging”. Sonya Gaches engages with bell hooks’ (2009: 24) observation that home is a place of belonging. Returning to her geographic home, hooks felt “a sense of belonging that I never felt elsewhere, experiencing unbroken ties to the land, to homefolk, to our vernacular speech”. What matters isn’t her hills of Kentucky but her interconnectedness with these histories, the people, their struggles and their stories. Kentucky, it is argued here, is the thing that provides a sense of belonging giving it a feeling of home. The autoethnographic narrative in chapter “The Things of Home: Histories, People, Stories, Belonging” draws upon this thing-ness of home connecting children to their histories, their people, their stories, to where they feel they belong. In chapter “Heart(h)less: Negative-­visibility and Positive-­invisibility an Irish Travellers’ Tale” Colette Murray explores negative visibility and positive invisibility through the Irish Travellers’ tale. Traveller lives are intrinsically linked to nomadism “whether travel is still a current reality for any group or individual or whether it has become a deferred dream” (Liégeois, 2007). Traveller children’s (positive) invisibility in ECCE settings (Murray, 2017) is rationalized as protection against anti-Traveller bias. In March 2017, the Traveller community were recognized as an ethnic group in Irish society. Chapter “Heart(h)less: Negative-­ visibility and Positive-­ invisibility an Irish Travellers’ Tale” explores the complex relationship between the Irish Traveller and settled dominant communities’ visions of home and the implications for early childhood settings. In the penultimate chapter, Mathias Urban turns to the idea of an intellectual home. Despite being continuously rendered invisible, irrelevant, or non-existent, “reconceptualist” scholarship has become an intellectual home for many; its physical manifestation a travelling conference, over 30 years on the road to date. Inspired by Fernand Deligny’s (1970) ideas and practices, the chapter explores how such a non-space (U-Topos) can nurture the hope (Freire, 2004) and affirmation (Braidotti, 2011) needed to effectively change the world. This chapter is an invitation to move (!)

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beyond the recent inward turn of post-critical scholarship. The concluding chapter takes up this invitation through a thematic response to diverse journeys and trajectories evident in between the paragraphs and pages of a book dedicated to disrupting, celebrate, and care for home and early childhood care and education. In this spirit, Margarita Ruiz-Guerrero shares a letter to take on a next journey in reconceptualizing early childhood education.

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Shearer, D.  E., & Shearer, D.  L. (2009). The Portage model: An international home approach to early intervention for young children and their families. In J. Roopnarine & J. E. Johnson (Eds.), Approaches to early childhood education (5th ed., pp. 68–94). Pearson. Stewart, G.  T. (2020). Māori philosophy: indigenous thinking from Aotearoa. Bloomsbury. Tesar, M. (2015). Te Whāriki in Aotearoa New Zealand: Witnessing and resisting neoliberal and neo-colonial discourses in early childhood education. In V.  Pacini-Ketchabaw & A.  Taylor (Eds.), Unsettling the colonial places and spaces of early childhood education (pp. 145–170). Routledge. Tesar, M., & Arndt, S. (2020). Re-Reading and re-activating Te Whāriki through a posthuman childhood studies lens. In A. Gunn & J. Nuttall (Eds.), Weaving Te Whāriki: Aotearoa New Zealand’s early childhood curriculum document in theory and practice (pp. 181–194). NZCER Press. Turner, S. (2007). Make-over culture and the New Zealand dream of home. In Landfall (Vol. 214, pp. 81–86). Otago University Press. United Nations. (1989). Conventions on the rights of the child. https://www.ohchr. org/en/professionalinterest/pages/crc.aspx Vandenbroeck, M., Roets, G., & Snoeck, A. (2009). Immigrant mothers crossing borders: Nomadic identities and multiple belongings in early childhood education. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 17(2), 203–216. Vismann, C. (2005). Derrida, philosopher of the law. German Law Journal, 6(1), 5–13. Warner, K. (2007). Homeboy. In Landfall (Vol. 214, p. 70). Otago University Press.

The Deconstruction of the Language of Home Andrew Gibbons

In horror films, the home is one very affective device that gives the viewer shivers, producing unease and anxiousness. The haunted house is just one example of how the idea of a home can be diverted from its typical narrative of safety, belonging and familiarity. For children’s fiction, the haunted house is a recurring phenomenon that draws upon the tradition of fairy tales and folk stories (Grider, 1999). Horror stories reveal the ways in which a home’s presumed qualities can be reconceptualised. Home then is not a static concept. One dimension of this fluidity is early childhood care and education. The development of an early childhood sector in a society or nation has profound but often unnoticed and unrecognised impact on the meaning and experience of home. With constant political tinkering, developments in governance of early childhood care and education alter what home means to children, to families and to communities. Hence, the idea of making an early childhood centre home-­ like is a somewhat absurd and impossible task for an early childhood

A. Gibbons (*) Auckland University of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Gibbons et al. (eds.), Home in Early Childhood Care and Education, Critical Cultural Studies of Childhood, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43695-6_2

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teaching team. More than this, any and all attempts to produce an experience of home in the early childhood centre will contribute to new experiences of the very thing, home, that the teachers intend to replicate through their intentional design of the curriculum. The idea that this task is impossible resonates with Jacques Derrida’s study of hospitality. In this chapter, Derrida’s (2000a, b) deconstruction of hospitality offers a way to explore the idea of home that recognises that the impossibility of home is a necessary ethical impossibility in a pedagogy of care (Dahlberg & Moss, 2005). To question assumptions about and experiences of hospitality offers a critical and careful approach to the meaning and experiences of home in early childhood care and education. Deconstruction operates here as a task of “restlessness” in questioning the “conditions of discourse” (Vismann, 2005: 8) that reveals what is not said, what is made unwelcome, and what is critical to the possibilities of talking about home. Through Derrida (2000a, b) we become interested in how an idea of home makes the politics of early childhood care and education possible, and we attend to the daily multiple and changing manifestations of home in and beyond language. The conditions of discourse offer insight into conceptual configurations. This does not, however, position this chapter as disconnected from the daily lives of early childhood centres. Berikoff (2008) argues deconstruction is highly applied, working carefully within a particular context— the context of the early childhood centre community. In its deconstruction of home, this chapter makes a case for deconstruction as a practice in early childhood centre communities, and a case for home as deconstruction. The qualities of home as deconstruction then become something to sense and live in an early childhood centre community that recognises the very community-ness of the community. To suggest that it is impossible to make a centre like a home is, in this work, and following Derrida, not a paralysis or obstruction. There will be things to do for centre communities. Those things are likely already being done. Their doing often goes unnoticed. A sense of bringing justice to the unsaid philosophical complexities of the early childhood centre community is key here. Noticing the philosophical work that is typically unnoticed can also be said to be a commitment to deconstruction—a recognition that philosophical work is always at home in an early childhood centre. The chapter next explores Derrida’s thinking on and through deconstruction, followed by a deconstruction of hospitality. Each section explores an application in the context of early childhood care and

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education. Following the work of Berikoff (2008) the particular example of Te Whāriki (Ministry of Education, 2017) as an early childhood curriculum is explored. In Aotearoa New Zealand, the development of this curriculum was always going to demand of teachers and of policy makers that they resist prescriptive approaches to early childhood care and education, resist the idea of the production of particular child and adult subjects, and keep notions of justice, care and ethics as central to the experience of early childhood care and education.

Derrida on Deconstruction The focus of this first section is to trace out some of the scholarship on deconstruction. The point here is not to provide a fixed definition of deconstruction. Deconstruction has been definable in its indefinability, and in the possibility that it is never particularly clear what someone is doing when they do deconstruction (Kamuf, 2004). Before getting into the apparent authorities on deconstruction (keeping in mind that it is very probable that none of the scholars below would want to claim to being an authority on either Derrida or deconstruction, or at least would recognise the importance of glancing disruptively at the very idea of being an authority on anything let alone on deconstruction), this section opens with an invitation to recognise deconstruction as an essence of being always at play in the play-full days of an early childhood centre. Derrida (2002: 204) suggests deconstruction is “an unconditional right to ask critical questions” and that the asking of critical questions offers a disruptive glance. So, within Derrida’s thought that deconstruction is an unconditional right to ask critical questions and that such questions offer disruptive glances lies a sense that deconstruction is not an approach that requires attendance at a workshop or the completion of a qualification (although both possibilities might be particularly excellent opportunities for the flourishing of the teacher in a world of highly technocratically focused professional learning experiences—how to do this or that to extract better outcomes in the centre community). The centre community is engaged in perpetual glances of disruption on account of the right to ask critical questions. That right may also be a principle to test every day, in the same way that the principle of intellectual equality is a principle to test every day (see Rancière, 1991).

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The view to test here is that children and adults are engaged in constant critical questioning with each other whether it is prescribed and intentional or not—the task is to recognise the already existing critical quality of the questions being asked, and the conditions which motivate those questions. In each of these critically questioning engagements, with one or more questions and question askers, there are at the same time other critical questions being asked. In an early childhood centre community, looking at things in different ways is an entirely familiar and common experience to all, and one in which you could possibly even say, the centre community feels at home. These glances of disruption that emerge from critical questions that are a familiar part of the day, feel natural, and so feel like part of the fabric that makes early childhood centre communities places in which people feel at home. The idea that all centres naturally nurture critical questions can be a particularly troubling idea. A large body of scholarship on the importance of critical reflection might suggest that, on the contrary, there’s insufficient critical questioning in many centre communities. A disruption would then be required—one that opens up centre communities to the equality of critical questioning, and to the centre community’s capacity to lead its own critical questions rather than be led by external organisations and institutions. Karen Barad suggests that this disruption opens things up, “examining the foundations of certain concepts and ideas, seeing how contingency operates to secure the ‘foundations’ of concepts we cannot live without, and using that contingency to open up other possible meanings/matterings” (Barad, in an interview with Juelskjær & Schwennesen, 2012: 14). This examination can be seen as the why questions that are asked more or less intentionally to open things up, rather than to obstruct or close things down. In this way, deconstruction is a practice of “affirmation” (Naas, 2005: 11). Derrida’s thinking about deconstruction is widely taken up across different fields of inquiry including law, religious studies, hospitality and education. Taking up deconstruction within these fields reveals and disrupts hierarchies and hierarchical traditions (Vismann, 2005), for instance hierarchies of education and care (Gibbons, 2020). Deconstruction is an openness to questioning those things which appear to be taken for granted within a field. An openness such as this is a commitment to the new and surprising and to a resistance to prescription that gives deconstruction a poetic responsibility.

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Deconstruction offers momentum and continuity. It keeps open the possibilities of exclusion and the limits of critique, the inexhaustibility of meaning-making (Juelskjær & Schwennesen, 2012; Sheehan, 2000), an openness to questions and the politics of questioning (Peters, 2004; Senatore, 2011) compelled by a capacity to care about the appearance of hierarchies. Hierarchies are of concern for a dependency and debt that typically goes unsaid or unrecognised in a hierarchical relationship—that which is seen as being more or better is indebted to the thing that it is contrasted to. The asking of why resonates with a sense of justice regarding the debt of contrast. “Deconstruction equated with justice demands a linguistic analysis of the underlying paradoxes. It presupposes that the defining forces of law produces an unsaid, unpresented surplus” (Vismann, 2005: 6). In early childhood care and education, examples of this production are evident in the distribution of professional status to teachers. Regulations that determine professional pathways for teachers produce an apparently unprofessional surplus of adults who cannot claim to be teachers and as such are excluded from particular roles in the lives of children. Deconstruction dramatizes the exclusions, brings them to an extreme and confronts the law with that which is not justice in the realm of laws in order to give rise to the excluded. Or to put it differently: the cultivator of law breeds forgotten or suppressed forms of law with common legal features. (Vismann, 2005: 7)

Biesta (2014: 38) explains that deconstruction recognises when something “is excluded by what is present” and in this way deconstruction is “an affirmation of what is excluded and forgotten”. Think for example of the way in which norms of development and behaviour can operate in hierarchical ways in an early childhood centre community. Each norm excludes that which is not the norm, and yet each norm is indebted to that which is excluded in order for it to take its position and value as a norm. Affirmation is then a deeper concern and care for noticing, recognising and responding (a reflective mantra for early childhood teachers’ questions in Aotearoa New Zealand’s early childhood curriculum, see Ministry of Education, 2017) to exclusions. … a concern for exclusions may include any apparent exclusion of care in and as education. There is a deeper exclusion to consider in the formulation

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of care  – care is configured in an opposition to that which is the unsaid uncaring or careless and this unsaid uncaring includes that which is excluded in the professionalisation, vocationalisation and credentialisation of care in a care economy. In other words, while care can be excluded by those who determine what counts as education, those who determine what counts as care also engage in exclusions. (Gibbons, 2020: 361–362)

Derrida, “the meticulous observer and describer” (Vismann, 2005: 9) offers a persistent, restless and “relentless questioning of the … conditions of discourse” (Vismann, 2005: 8)—an approach that is concerned with the limits and extents of language in relation to thought, experience, and the experience of self and other through the production of text (Kamuf, 2004). This restlessness is familiar in a paradigm of constant, perhaps even absurdly constant, professional reflection on pedagogical practice. The distinction might be seen in deconstruction as an ethical compulsion, a will or motivation that compels each teacher in their asking of questions— contrasted to modes of professional inquiry that are imposed on teachers as a mode of governing of the teacher, and that do not question the conditions of discourse. Rather, the discourse is intentionally forgotten. The prescribed governing of questions is evident in the professionalisation of reflective practice. For example, in the demands of beginning teachers to generate regular reflections on professional standards (see for instance Education Council, 2017). The beginning teacher is compelled by external agencies to produce a series of self-managing performances in order to enter and remain in the teaching profession. The conditions which produce these demands upon the teacher are taken for granted, and as such forgotten as politically and socially constructed conditions. In its taken for grantedness, this approach to the professionalisation of reflection on pedagogical practice obstructs a recognition in each teacher of their own internal compulsion to ask questions. As an approach to affirmation (Naas, 2005) there is a sense of deconstruction as limitless (Sheehan, 2000; Vismann, 2005). It is never ending, and it never really settles on any kind of endpoint, finish line or summit. Deconstruction is an approach to the everyday life of the community, “a way-of-being that includes ‘faith’ and affirmation of the unknown and in-­ coming of for example, democracy, justice, and hospitality” (Berikoff, 2008: 2).

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Deconstruction isn’t necessarily a good approach to particular kinds of questions that early childhood centres can, at times, be encouraged to ask. For instance, if centres are asked to assess all the children for conduct disorder, or to apply social competence progress tools to the assessment of every child in the centre (see Ministry of Education, 2022), deconstruction could be seen to be a poor choice of approach to that community-­ wide task. Deconstruction is slow and messy, while these externally prompted questions are concerned with efficiency and progress. If the concern of the centre community were to produce predictable and observable learning about the meaning and experience and dimensions of a home, then deconstruction will only frustrate the community in its attempts to agree on what should be taught about making and living in homes, and how to chart each child’s development of an orthodox and normalised understanding of home. If however, a centre was concerned for the ways in which home as a concept impacts on the daily lives of children, well then deconstruction offers up a way of recognising how home (and progress) narratives rely on ideas of stasis—through deconstruction a centre community recognises the exclusion of stasis and then associated exclusions of children for whom the concept of home (and progress) excludes their participation and agency in the centre community. Here, deconstruction invites ‘taking another look’ in the questioning of the prefabricated homes in the book corners, in the family play materials, in the playhouses and climbing frames, in the songs and fingerplays, and in the minds of the teachers as they engage in daily, spontaneous, unplanned conversations about home (Penrose & Warren, 2019). Deconstruction engages with participation and agency because it is concerned with experiences of self and a relationship to the Other. Through Derrida, an openness to the Other provides an essence of the life of the centre community. This openness is seen as radical (Berikoff, 2008). The radicalness of being open is a political openness to question that which appears familiar or safe or predictable, and to challenge ways of thinking about and practising early childhood education that establish “impenetrable borders restricting the possibilities that come out of creativity, uncertainty, the unknown and the excess of hospitality…” (Berikoff, 2008: 15). Deconstruction as a way-of-being, as hospitality, fosters an attitude and space of open-ended acceptance and affirmation for the unknown to-come,

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which can be frightening, astonishing or delightful. What possibilities could be revealed if we broaden our perspectives and open our horizons to the asymmetry of the infinitely unknowable Other? (Berikoff, 2008: 15)

In early childhood care and education Derrida’s work informs deconstructions of the very practical and lived dimensions of an early childhood centre community: of inclusion (Berikoff, 2008); care and subjectivity (Dahlberg & Moss, 2005); children’s literature (Deszcz-Tryhubczak, 2019; Haynes & Murris, 2019); pedagogy (Taguchi, 2009); cultural diversity (Ang, 2010); and child development (Mercieca et al., 2018). Deconstruction always works and reworks within a context (Berikoff, 2008), not from afar. Within any context deconstruction is inexhaustibly concerned with an interest in people, places and things—an inexhaustible interest that deconstruction shares with the early childhood curriculum, Te Whāriki, in Aotearoa New Zealand (Ministry of Education, 2017). More than this, Te Wha ̄riki provides a context because it boldly attempts to produce something radically different to an orthodox understanding of curriculum and recognises in its essence and its construction that which is of concern in the work of deconstruction: that context builds upon an opening of relationships—a welcoming of different worlds into the construction of a complex weave of curriculum principles and strands. Deconstruction “suggests an invitation and welcome of the ‘Other’, the ‘stranger’ into one’s home” (Berikoff, 2008: 3). Hence, the aim is not simply to approach the concept of home through the deconstruction-­ within, as an early childhood teacher and teacher educator within the community of early childhood education in Aotearoa New Zealand and internationally. Deconstruction within early childhood might be considered something of a task in continually pushing at any perceived borders of exclusion. In this inexhaustibility neither deconstruction nor Te Whāriki takes for granted the fixedness of things and keeps open to the entirely unexpected and unpredictable. This sensitivity to difference is a challenge to the ordering of the world as this or that kind of knowable, fixable thing. Te Whāriki is evidence because it presents the common knowledge of the early childhood sector in Aotearoa. The curriculum document was built from the ground up during the 1990s, and actively engaged with the limits of colonial, British, thinking through a recognition of the knowledge gifted by Te Kōhanga Reo (Carr & May, 1993)—knowledge that recognises complexities of relationship to community and to place in education (Penetito,

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2009; Tangaere, 2006) and builds upon the traditions of the marae (Reedy, 2019). Those traditions contribute to a curriculum as a particular kind of expansive and yet intimate home, built upon the foundational “ideal of a document that would provide a bicultural and bilingual framework for early childhood curriculum in Aotearoa-New Zealand could become a reality” (Carr & May, 1993: 11). Berikoff (2008) nods to Te Wha ̄riki as a deconstructive movement because of the ways in which it challenges developmental theory and practice. The strands and principles provide early childhood centre communities with an openness to different ways of thinking and doing curriculum—an openness that resists prescriptive and instrumental early childhood curriculum. In addition, Te Whāriki recognises curriculum as constructed by a whole centre community, rather than by curriculum experts and/or policy makers. Hospitality enters into the conversation here because deconstruction is an approach of welcoming and openness. However, Derrida explores unconditional hospitality as impossible. His hospitality is an openness to deconstruction of hospitality in order to bring new understanding to the meaning and experience of hospitality. While children (and teachers) may often be described as scientists making sense of the world, an important distinction in deconstruction demands that sense making is fluid and open. The task of sense making is not to label and categorise and sort, to work out what can be included and what can be excluded on account of some observed properties. In this way deconstruction is a care enacted in the early childhood centre community, enacting a pedagogy that challenges an ethical position always balancing barely perceivable impossibility.

Hospitality The first section took up the task of discussing deconstruction and this included some thoughts on how deconstruction is practised in early childhood care and education. This next section explores the relationship between deconstruction and hospitality. That relationship draws in questions concerning early childhood care and education and any expression of a centre community as home-like—a relationship that is explored with particular attention to the concept of curriculum. Derrida’s study of hospitality offers an example of Derrida doing deconstruction, asking critical questions about hospitality. It also provides a sense of how hospitality is in some way deconstruction. In other words,

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when caring for an Other, a guest, a stranger, a foreigner, one is engaged in deconstruction: “deconstruction is hospitality” (Naas, 2005: 11, italics in original). Hospitality emerges out of the event of welcoming the other and as such is a dimension of subjectivity. That welcome is “characterised by uncertainty, dissensus, dissymmetry, ambiguities, interruptions” (Dahlberg & Moss, 2005: 81) that contribute to the “possibility of difference” (Dahlberg & Moss, 2005: 93). A “geographical interpretation of hospitality is encouraged by connections made by Derrida and others between this idea and current political debates about migration, asylum, and post-national citizenship” (Barnett, 2005: 5). These debates, for those who live geographically excluded lives, are about more than geography. They are exclusions of “the reciprocal and co-constitutive characteristics of subjectivity” (Barnett, 2005: 6). Keeping in mind a concern for hierarchies and injustices, in his deconstruction of hospitality Derrida engages in a disruption of “understandings of human action that retain a strong elective affinity with values of mastery, sovereignty, and possession” and that the “broader significance of this argument is, then, that established ways of thinking about the relational encounter between Self and Other – in terms of dialogical, reciprocal, dialectical, or symmetrical relations of co-implication – might actually obstruct rather than advance the cultivation of ethical responses to otherness” (Barnett, 2005: 12). Derrida (2000a: 45) researches hospitality in “the concepts, the vocabulary, the axioms that are elementary and presumed natural or untouchable”, tracing back to Ancient Greece as a foundational contribution to certain ways of understanding distinctions between us and them—ways that produce and are produced by families, communities and societies. The origins of hospitality are evident in selected texts and phenomena that can be seen to influence thinking about hospitality (establishing a sense of the laws of hospitality) and associated concepts such as home that engage in interdependent demands. Ideas of hospitality make demands on ideas of home, and ideas of home make demands on ideas of hospitality. Instances of twentieth- and twenty-first-century new media are of particular interest in Derrida’s work on account of a capacity to reveal and disrupt perceived boundaries or perimeters of, for instance, the family. The privacy of the home is disrupted by the constant flow of information from that home to data gathering organisations. Each of these dimensions of hospitality reveal hospitality as paradoxical and impossible.

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It does not seem to me that I am able to open up or to offer hospitality, however generous, even in order to be generous, without reaffirming: this is mine, I am at home, you are welcome in my home, without any implication of “make yourself at home” but on condition that you observe the rules of hospitality by respecting the being-at-home of my home, the being-itself of what I am. There is almost an axiom of self-limitation or self-contradiction in the law of hospitality. (Derrida, 2000b: 14)

There is an inkling here of the tensions that Derrida examines in the concepts of hosting and hostility, both of which he explores in their contribution to the concept and experience of hospitality, and which contribute to hospitality as a concept eluding any sense of “objective knowledge” (Derrida, 2000b: 7). Hospitality is conditional on an authority, there is no possible hosting without an authority. Hospitality brings into play justice, economics, politics and ethics (Derrida, 2000b). “Universal hospitality arises … from an obligation, a right, and a duty all regulated by law” (Derrida, 2000b: 4). In the work of Immanuel Kant, Derrida recognises that “hospitality is opposed to what is nothing other than opposition itself, namely, hostility” (Derrida, 2000b: 4). The host then regards the stranger as an other who is due some form of welcome but who, in being regarded as a stranger, is not welcome. The stranger must trust that they will receive some hospitality when arriving (Berikoff, 2008). The host occupies a hostile sovereignty if being able to be hospitable is to mean anything. Every child engaging with the daily construction and experience of ‘mine’ is engaging with the essences of Other and Self, of sovereignty and subjectivity, and of the impossibility of hospitality. The impossibility is a challenge to reject a sense of security in the presence of other children. Following Westmoreleand (2008) on the responsibility of the guest, the other children then become responsible for that perceived hospitality of the child giving up what they see as theirs. Derrida (2000b: 5) cites Kant: The peoples of the earth have thus entered in varying degrees into a universal community, and it has developed to the point where a violation of rights in one part of the world is felt everywhere. The idea of a cosmopolitan right is therefore not fantastic and overstrained; it is a necessary complement to the unwritten code of political and international right, transforming it into a universal right of humanity. Only under this condition can we flatter ourselves that we are continually advancing towards a perpetual peace.

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But, taking Kant’s idea for cosmopolitan rights further, in which the host is compelled to welcome the stranger, the host “becomes almost the hostage of the one invited, of the guest… the hostage of the one he receives, the one who keeps him at home” (Derrida, 2000b: 9). Derrida’s exploration of the criteria of hospitality reveals the functions of languages in generation of inclusions and exclusions, with the function of a name as an essential inclusion—to be recognised as worthy of naming is an entitlement. The exclusionary functions of hospitality present a problem observed by Kant in terms of universal rights. But languages are fluid, and linguistic belonging can occur in different intersections, so the constructs of family, community and nation are crossed over by concepts of disciplines, professions, subcultures, classes, and so on. To speak the language of the teacher gives a teacher a sense of being at home in the teaching profession. To speak the language of an early childhood centre community similarly establishes who is at home in the centre and who is foreign (Derrida, 2000a). The apparent impossibility of hospitality does not compel Derrida to give up on the unconditional welcome; it compels Derrida to overcome the conditions which appear to make hospitality impossible. “Hospitality can only take place beyond hospitality, in deciding to let it come” Derrida, 2000b: 14). The home is of interest in its impossibility and its newness. The apparent foreignness of others (and also of thoughts, feelings and observations) that we may initially reject, to see as not at home, are no longer summarily refused entry. The familiar and the foreign, the alien and strange and uncanny, all get under the skin—or perhaps more accurately, there is a shift to understanding that they already were under the skin. Recognition of this elusiveness invites recognition of depth—it is a threshold into rich relational conversations that map out values, beliefs, philosophies, politics and practices all associated with what it means to be able to, to intend to, to desire to, offer a welcome to the centre community. Such discussions reveal ideas of private and public, ownership and property, sovereignty and agency, self and other, individuality and community, responsibility and independence. In an early childhood centre community these values take shape in policies and regulations, design and organisation of the physical spaces, the selected curriculum materials, and so on. The aim is not to erase these boundaries but rather to recognise and engage with them continually, keeping a close eye on the magnitude of conditions that limit the hospitality of the centre community (Barnett, 2005; Berikoff, 2008).

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In the study of hospitality in early childhood education, Berikoff (2008: 3) recognises that centre communities: … can be described as places of hospitality where the function and spirit of welcoming is integral; welcoming children and families throughout the day, welcoming newcomers to the program, welcoming new staff, students and other guests. Early childhood spaces become welcoming places where children, families and educators can cultivate a sense of familiarity and belonging. Therefore, early childhood spaces become a home away from home.

The early childhood care and education sector also provides an insight into the transactional nature of hospitality. Hospitality functions as an industrial concept that binds together different services aimed at profiting from leisure experiences (Hemmington & Gibbons, 2017). Thinking of the hospitality industry’s nature as industry is an important exercise when questioning the hospitality of the early childhood centre as home. To be home, to say this place is like your home, or to invite someone to feel at home, is a commodified experience that is designed and assessed for the benefit of the business. Its intention is to produce a profitable simulation of home. Yet, Derrida’s work challenges the idea of a home that is ever free from transactions. Transactions are, in other words, always present whether the home is a commodified simulation of home or a private family home. Following Derrida then, it’s dangerous to negate the possibility of recreating home on account of the economic transactions alone. Requiring parents to pay fees for the child’s attendance at an early childhood centre does not prevent that centre from being called home-like. Arguments for free and universal early childhood education, and criticism of an early childhood education market (see for instance Mitchell, 2019), are important to engage with and keep open. This engagement is necessary not because of the appearance of transactions but because of the particular nature of those transactions within an education and care market. The engagement, however, does not resolve the problem of home because Derrida’s thinking guides us to understand home as always an impossibility too. An early childhood centre community can never truly be host and as such be hospitable, because governance, regulation and licensing disrupt the possibility of sovereignty necessary for hospitality. While childhood is always in some way governed, as a construction, modes of governing vary. In deconstruction, a concern for modes of governing that forget their own construction is evident. A community or

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nation or world that is particularly anxious to govern childhood for its prescribed ends must resort to more and more layers of management of the child and the world around them. All these techno-scientific possibilities threaten the interiority of the home (“we are no longer at home!”) and really the very integrity of the self, of ipseity. These possibilities are experienced as threats bearing down on the particular territory of one’s own and on the law of private property. (Derrida, 2000a: 53)

As guests, those invited to the community (Derrida, 2000a), the parent and the child similarly disrupt the possibility of hospitality. These observations do not negate the benefits of exploring the nature of those transactions and recognising where such transactions and relationships engage in their own negations, limitations, exclusions and exploitations. An acceptance that there is no essential home recognises that the experience of home is the experience of difference. For centre communities that are sensitive to difference in recognising the experience of home, the point is then not to see various kinds of exchanges as more or less homely, as if we can measure ourselves to be almost home in the simulation of home. Existentially, it may be quite important to operate with a sense of almost home-ness. To be content in the myth of home is not a problem for some, however that contentment produces, perhaps, a short-sightedness in terms of that which is unimagined crossing the threshold. Let’s say, speculatively, a centre has not imagined that it would be providing a homelike experience for a hybrid deer child (Lemire, 2009), for an A.I. child designed to replace a human child (Aldiss, 1969), for a child with telekinesis (Dahl, 1988), for an extra-terrestrial who missed the flight home (Mathison, 1982), or for a laboratory experiment (Shelley, 1994). In Berikoff’s (Berikoff, 2008) research, teachers recognised hospitality was limited by policies, fees, waiting lists, regulations, philosophies and theories. However, the point is not to remove all theory and philosophy and policy and regulation. Rather the task is to keep questioning them and to reflect on the ways in which each of these might entrench an assumption about, for instance, childhood or learning, and in so doing lose sight of, forget, its nature as an assumption, and then become hostile to other assumptions having now taken up a relationship to a Truth.

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Contrarily, hospitality is welcoming that which we do not know, it is saying ‘yes’ to that which we do not know, it is affirming the Other …. However, facing the Other with an attitude and approach of not knowing, does not preclude the knowledge and skill necessary to proceed. Rather, we are challenged to broaden our ontological and epistemological experiences and explorations while re-examining our biases and assumptions about the Other. (Berikoff, 2008: 10–11)

In any hierarchy of homes challenging an essential and privileged construct does not then allow for overlooking how that construct is a configuration of privileges that require resolving. In other words, to say that a 20 square metre shack in a slum is no more or less home-like than, say, an architecturally lauded multilevel high-tech dwelling overlooking a pristine lake, does not lead to allowing for those discriminations. Home as deconstruction is a way of being that demands careful attention to the ways in which our thinking produces our being. Through open and daily and inclusive and limitless discussions by an entire community, a necessary relationship is revealed and welcomed: “one’s identity is only understood in relation to others” (Westmoreleand, 2008: 2). This relationship resonates with the early childhood curriculum Te Whāriki and the essence of care that is established in a partnership that is always recognised for its ethical impossibility. While this chapter recognises Te Wha ̄riki as deconstruction, deconstruction’s persistent questioning requires questioning the ways in which Te Whāriki itself operates in limiting and exclusionary ways—testing out limits and checking in on exclusions. The language of the curriculum, the very word curriculum, sets up an impossibility with regards welcoming the community into the institutional setting of an early childhood centre community. The language of curriculum produces a complex set of relationships with regard what is and is not early childhood care and education, and who can and cannot educate and care in early childhood centre communities. Each teacher enters into the centre community with a complex set of experience that contribute to their way of thinking about the deconstruction of home in early childhood. For many teachers around the world, this thinking is tinkered with during the phenomena of teacher education. It is to teacher education that this chapter turns in concluding its deconstruction of home in early childhood care and education.

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Home and Teacher Education Derrida’s thinking on hospitality engages with the impossibility of hospitality. This chapter explores what this impossibility means for the experience of home in early childhood. Impossibility is explored for the possibilities that such an understanding offers. An idea of impossibility challenges early childhood centre communities to be restless with language and with the daily life experiences that are in some way constructed by, and contribute to the construction of, that language. The idea of a restless openness produces a resonance between approaches to deconstruction from the work of Derrida and the spirit and intent of the early childhood curriculum document Te Whāriki. In this chapter early childhood curriculum is explored for the way in which it resists prescriptive, instrumental and universal curriculum tendencies, and the way in which it demands teachers to be open to difference. Deconstruction offers a way into thinking of the limits of thinking and the obstacles to the thinking that is also at the same time being in the world. The writing of this chapter is an example of this experience as something of a process; although it’s not a process that can be nicely staged out or explained. What started as a chapter taking up the problem of home in terms of the realities of life in an early childhood centre stumbled into a reflection on teacher education. The early childhood curriculum is not written for teacher education and yet teacher education institutions sit in a complex relationship with the curriculum. In order to understand the limits of the curriculum as a place that can be called home, it is important to recognise the way in which teacher education manifests different inclusions and exclusions; and constructs and obstructs expressions of curriculum through its structures and discourses. During the study of teaching, the student teacher experiences these inclusions, exclusions, constructions and obstructions through their study of curriculum. Each of these experiences then contributes to, as just one of many examples, the student teacher’s understanding of home in early childhood curriculum. Deconstruction of home then necessarily questions teacher education and the production of the professionals who contribute to the nature of that home.

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References Aldiss, B. (1969). Supertoys last all summer long (Originally published in Harper’s Bazaar). https://mrsamanela.weebly.com/uploads/9/0/2/2/90220975/ supertoys_last_all_summer_long.pdf Ang, L. (2010). Critical perspectives on cultural diversity in early childhood: Building an inclusive curriculum and provision. Early Years, 30(1), 41–52. Barnett, C. (2005). Ways of relating: Hospitality and the acknowledgement of otherness. Progress in Human Geography, 29(1), 5–21. Berikoff, A. (2008, June 2–6). Im/possibility of hospitality in early childhood spaces: Negotiating tension between the unconditional and conditional. In The 16th international reconceptualizing early childhood education conference. University of Victoria. Biesta, G. (2014). The beautiful risk of education. Paradigm. Carr, M., & May, H. (1993). Choosing a model. Reflecting on the development process of Te Whariki: National early childhood curriculum guidelines in New Zealand. International Journal of Early Years Education, 1(3), 7–22. Dahl, R. (1988). Matilda. Jonathan Cape. Dahlberg, G., & Moss, P. (2005). Ethics and politics in early childhood education. RoutledgeFalmer. Derrida, J. (2000a). Of hospitality: Anne Dufourmantelle invites Jacques Derrida to respond (R. Bowlby, Trans.). Stanford University Press. Derrida, J. (2000b). Hospitality. Angelkai, 5(3), 3–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 09697250020034706 Derrida, J. (2002). Without alibi (P. Kamuf, ed. & trans.). Stanford University Press. Deszcz-Tryhubczak, J. (2019). Thinking with deconstruction: Book-Adult-Child events in children’s literature research. Oxford Literary Review, 41(2), 185–201. Education Council. (2017). Our code our standards: Code of professional responsibility and standards for the teaching profession. Education Council. Available at https://teachingcouncil.nz/sites/default/files/Our%20Code%20Our%20 Standards%20web%20booklet%20FINAL.pdf Gibbons, A. (2020). The negation of babysitting: Deconstruction and care in early childhood. Global Studies of Childhood, 10(4), 358–367. Grider, S. (1999). The haunted house in literature, popular culture, and tradition: A consistent image. Contemporary Legend, 2, 174–204. Haynes, J., & Murris, K. (2019). Taking age out of play: Children’s animistic philosophising through a picturebook. Oxford Literary Review, 41(2), 290–309. Hemmington, N., & Gibbons, A. (2017). ‘Pas d’hospitalité’: Derrida and the study of hospitality in higher education. Hospitality & Society, 7(2), 115–131. Kamuf, P. (2004). The university in the world it is attempting to think. Culture Machine, 6. https://culturemachine.net/deconstruction-is-in-cultural-studies/the-university-in-the-world-it-is-attempting-to-think/

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Lemire, J. (2009). Sweet tooth. Vertigo. Mathison, M. (writer). (1982). E.T. the extra-terrestrial. Amblin Entertainment. Mercieca, D. P., Mercieca, D., & Bugeja, S. (2018). In Hermes’ shoes: Labelling and diagnosing children as acts of translation. Theory & Psychology, 28(4), 542–558. Ministry of Education. (2017). Te wha ̄riki. He wha ̄riki matauranga mo nga ̄ mokopuna o Aotearoa: Early childhood curriculum. Author. Ministry of Education. (2022). PLD supported trial of the early learning practice and progress tools (Kōwhiti Whakapae). https://www.educationcounts.govt. nz/publications/ECE/pld-­supported-­trial-­of-­the-­early-­learning-­practice-­and-­ progress-­tools-­kowhiti-­whakapae Mitchell, L. (2019). Turning the tide on private profit-focused provision in early childhood education. New Zealand Annual Review of Education, 24, 75–89. Naas, M. (2005). “Alors, qui êtes-vous?” Jacques Derrida and the question of hospitality. SubStance, 34(1), 6–17. Penetito, W. (2009). Place-based education: Catering for curriculum, culture and community. New Zealand Annual Review of Education, 18(2008), 5–29. Penrose, P., & Warren, K. (2019). Take another look: A guide to observing children. New Shoots Publishing. Peters, M.  A. (2004). Derrida, pedagogy and the calculation of the subject. In P.  Trifonas & M.  A. Peters (eds.), Derrida, deconstruction and education (pp. 59–77). Blackwell Publishing. Rancière, J. (1991). The ignorant schoolmaster: Five lessons in educational emancipation (K. Ross trans.). Stanford University Press. Reedy, T. T. K. (2019). Toku Rangatiratanga na te Mana Matauranga: “Knowledge and power set me free…”. In A.  C. Gunn & J.  Nuttall (Eds.), Weaving Te Whariki: Aotearoa New Zealand’s early childhood curriculum document in theory and practice (3rd ed., pp. 25–44). NZCER Press. Senatore, M. (2011). In the name of the event: The deconstructive conjuration. Parallax, 17(1), 43–53. Sheehan, K.  C. (2000). Caring for deconstruction. Yale Journal of Law and Feminism 12(1), 85–142. Shelley, M. (1994). Frankenstein. Dover Publications. (Original work published 1818) Taguchi, H. L. (2009). Going beyond the theory/practice divide in early childhood education: Introducing an intra-active pedagogy. Routledge. Tangaere, A.  R. (2006). Collaboration and Te Kohanga Reo. Children’s Issues: Journal of the Children’s Issues Centre, 10(2), 35–37. Vismann, C. (2005). Derrida, philosopher of the law. German Law Journal, 6(1), 5–13. Westmoreleand, M.  W. (2008). Interruptions: Derrida and hospitality. Kritike, 2(1), 1–10.

Whose Home? Problematizing the Nature of “Homelike” in Early Childhood Education Mara Sapon-Shevin

Many early childhood educators speak to the goal of making early childhood centers “homelike.” Presumably, this naming of “home” is intended to invoke warmth, safety and familiarity. The conjectured hope is that children will feel as comfortable in early childhood centers as they are at home. But several problematic assumptions are embedded in this imaging of home. First, it runs the risk of positing a homogenized home, as though all children’s homes are the same, and therefore that the similar structures and policies will make all children feel at home. Second, for children whose homes are not places of love or safety, our goal might need to be to making their classrooms very different from their home. This chapter problematizes descriptions of early childhood environments as homelike, and brings to bear understandings of the visibility/invisibility of differences and conceptions of safety.

M. Sapon-Shevin (*) Inclusive Education, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Gibbons et al. (eds.), Home in Early Childhood Care and Education, Critical Cultural Studies of Childhood, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43695-6_3

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It is almost standard for early childhood centers to advertise that they provide a home-like learning environment. Consider the following from the internet: Making an early childhood classroom feel like a “home away from home” is a great way to create a warm, welcoming, nurturing environment. Homelike environments are possible in most spaces with a little bit of creativity and imagination. Imagine how wonderful it would feel for a nervous new parent coming into a child care center to see a comfortable room where caregivers, families, and children gather and spend their time. (United States Department of Health and Human Services, 2021: para 17) Children are able to learn more successfully when the classroom environment is like their home environment. A soothing school environment makes the transition from home to school easier and reduces tension in small children. That’s why we do our very best to make sure our schools are warm and inviting – just like home. (Cadence Education, 2021: para 1)

One U.S.-based organization explains the importance of home-like environments as follows: The place where very young children spend their time is full of messages to the child. When caregivers and family members are intentional about the environments they create they can send messages such as: • Your family life and relationships are valued here. • This is a place where you can explore and learn.

• This place is kind and loving — just like home.

• I want to keep you safe and secure. • Our relationship is important. (United States Department of Health and Human Services, 2021: para 22)

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At the surface level, one can hope that feeling at home means that one will experience a sense of belonging; that a person is not a guest or an outsider. Being at home might imply a level of acceptance with a particular group of people in a specific place. To be at home means to be somewhere that feels as familiar as home—my bed, my things, my food. When we tell a guest to make yourself at home, it implies that we want the person to be comfortable doing what they would do in their own home—maybe taking food from the refrigerator or choosing music to play. We posit that everyone wants to feel at home and that children (and all of us) need to feel at home in order to learn and grow. But does home mean the same things to all children? Do all children have the same experience of home? Are we sure that evoking an image of home makes all children feel comfortable, safe or secure? This chapter interrogates homogenized/generalized conceptions and images of homes and problematizes them in two ways: the erasures of difference in homogenized early childhood education and the failure to explore critical differences in how we respond to those inequities. First, I argue that asserting that early childhood educational (ECE) settings are or should be home-like may negate children’s actual experiences of home; this home reference risks making the differences between the child’s home and their home at school invisible. Not all homes are the same in terms of who is in them, what they look like and how they feel. While some children may experience home as a loving, caring space where they are tended by adults who care for them gently and responsively, others may experience home as frightening, unpredictable or abusive. Or, perhaps, school is a place where eating is highly regulated and home is a place where you can eat what and when you want. Or home is a place where nudity is accepted and in school taking off one’s clothes is unacceptable, even punished. Anti-bias education (Derman-Sparks & Edwards, 2010) encourages us to respect, represent and name diversities among our students and their families. We are discouraged from discourses of colorblindness because making differences invisible is neither possible nor desirable. We are encouraged to explicitly name that children have specific families, eat different food, celebrate different holidays, wear different clothing, and have different skills and challenges. Simply accepting or celebrating differences may mask structural and societal inequalities that should be addressed and remediated rather than simply acknowledged or represented. How well do we discriminate

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between diversities we celebrate and differences that should be red flags of inequality and injustice? While we may want to urge appreciation of, or even taste Juan’s tacos or Nisha’s samosas, we do not want to celebrate that John often has no food at all and tries to take others’ lunches. And what happens when those in authority do not agree about which differences should be celebrated. In Florida (a state in the Southern USA), for example, legislation was recently enacted that prohibits teachers in kindergarten to third grade from discussing gender identity and sexual orientation (Phillips, 2022). Known as the “Don’t Say Gay” law, the legislation sharply limits what teachers can share about children’s or their families’ identities (having two moms, for example). This kind of policy will clearly not make children from LGBTQ families feel welcomed or included. The following two sections address two key points: (1) Children’s homes and experiences of home may vary tremendously; and (2) the differences in children’s lives and homes are not all ones that should celebrated or even accepted.

What if the Housekeeping Corner Doesn’t Look or Feel Like Your Home? In discussing home-like environments in early childhood educational (ECE) settings, we must first ask, whose home are you representing? Do educators inadvertently envision and perpetuate some homogenized version of what home looks like? As you read this, I invite you to pause and reflect on what you think a generic home looks like. Is there a living room and a separate dining area? Do people eat their meals in the kitchen or on the couch watching television? Do adults and children share bedrooms and/or are children’s bedrooms segregated by gender? How is the home furnished? Are there books? Toys? What’s on the walls? How tidy is the home? Are there things on the floor or on the tables? What covers the floors? How does your imagining of home compare to others? When we strive to make an ECE center homelike or design a specific area of the center as the housekeeping corner, are we reifying white, middle-­class hegemonic conceptions of home? It was noticeable to me during my visits in Aotearoa New Zealand that the area of the center with the little refrigerator and the pots and pans was called the family center and not the housekeeping corner. What are the implications of that variation in nomenclature? Is it the responsibility of girls (and women) to “keep

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house” or is it a place that belongs to the whole family? Can little boys cook and iron in that area? Can boys wear an apron? Do people still wear aprons? In some centers, this area of the space is called the dramatic play area, perhaps a more inclusive term that might invite acting outside traditional boxes of gender performance and stereotypical assumptions about who can pretend to be what. All children’s homes do not look or feel or sound or even smell alike. Perhaps your childhood home smelled of oil because most of the cooking involved fried foods. Maybe cleaning protocols in your home-made home smell like Lysol disinfectant. Or, if there were multiple pets in your home, perhaps the overpowering smell was the smell of cats or dogs. If home was near a train station or busy street, home may sound like traffic noises. Or if home was in the country, perhaps the sound of cows mooing evokes memories of home. While one family may gather around the kitchen table for meals, another family eats in the living room or on the porch. Or perhaps family members eat in shifts and do not gather as a large group. It is unlikely that any two homes are actually alike or even that individuals raised in the same home have identical images or memories. The pretend food in the housekeeping corner likely represents some version of what some people eat, but it may bear little resemblance to the specific foods that children in the center actually eat. If one were to order the Shimfun play food set from Amazon, one would see an advertisement featuring two young white children, and in your order you would receive a box of 143 play vegetables, fruits, meat, eggs, milk, juice, drinks, pizza, burgers, bread, cake, donuts, cookies and ice cream. A child whose diet consists of rice and tofu, tamales and enchiladas, or samosas and dal would not see their food represented. The doll corner that features an individual bed for each doll does not replicate the sleeping experience of children who co-sleep with adults or other siblings or who sleep in hammocks or on mats on the floor. The dress-up corner may contain clothes which reinforce stereotypes about gender (dresses for girls and suits for boys) and may not contain clothing from other cultures. In 2017, the company, Happy Little Tadpole, for example, sold pretend play dress up clothes (“for boys and girls”) divided into four categories: career, princess, superhero and open-ended. The on-­ site description of the “Princess Dress Up Clothes” read: Everyone likes to dress up, especially little girls pretending to be princesses (I mean, they DO have the best outfits, am I right?!) So, we have scoured

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the interwebs for the absolute highest-quality princess dress up clothes, pretend play dress up shoes, and also found a cute, princess themed toddler dress-up trunk. See our top picks for princess dress-up ideas below!

Differences in race, culture, family make-up, language, religion and food (and on and on) are all examples of diversity we might want to represent in early childhood centers—so that children feel at home and others learn about the diverse and complex world. If we wanted ECE settings to actually represent a variety of homes and family experiences, we would be very intentional and inclusive in how these settings were organized and furnished. What might we do to represent a diversity of “homes”? The argument for implementing education that is multicultural has been made for a long time. Swadener (1988) documented teachers’ attention to diversity issues with children. She found that most of the educators’ efforts represented more of a human relations approach (as articulated by Grant & Sleeter, 2007) rather than a more integrated, political multicultural approach. Thirty years later, progressive educators continue to call for education that is explicitly anti-bias. By this we mean education that recognizes that children have already been exposed to and internalized societal prejudices and need explicit instruction that pushes against hegemonic representation and understanding (Farago, 2017; Sapon-Shevin, 2017; Scarlet, 2016). Anti-bias education (ABE) can be differentiated from more general approaches described as multicultural education or diversity education, which typically focus more on learning about differences and varying cultures, celebrations, languages. Anti-bias education extends these objectives to ways in which those with different identities and characteristics are sometimes mistreated in society and how oppression can be challenged and redressed. It isn’t enough to teach about differences; we must purposefully teach against the existing oppressions. There is a significant difference between recognizing differences in skin color (and having pictures on the wall of people with various skin tones); the goal is to teach us all to be alert to racism and colorism and develop strategies for addressing them. Acknowledging different family structures (“Carlos has two moms”) is a first step, but true change comes from actively resisting policies and practices that are heteronormative or classist and instill equity at every level. The website of The Community Roots Charter School in New York City, for example, states—explicitly that the school:

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applies an anti-bias approach throughout our program to create and sustain an environment where a diverse student population can thrive. The anti-bias approach prioritizes issues of identity, discrimination, and social justice in our curriculum and our professional development. CRCS strives to be a space where all staff, students, and families feel supported, empowered and fully engaged. (Community Roots Charter School, n.d.: para 7)

When visiting the school, I observed a wall chart in the first-grade that shows photos of roti, pita, challah, tortillas and pumpernickel bread; the chart reads “Lots of kinds of bread.” The wall decoration is used not only to discuss family food differences but also to address potential teasing and lack of acceptance of others’ foods and families. I have a strong memory of a young Jewish child who ate her lunch in the bathroom rather than being teased about the matzoh in her lunch during Passover. Anti-bias teachers also challenge stereotypical gender roles in many ways. I have observed a teacher, who noticing that boys tended to dominate the block corner and girls the housekeeping corner, combined the two centers and encouraged the children to build and furnish houses together. Those with growing awareness of the problematics of a gender binary have supported dress up corners stocked with a variety of kinds of clothes—skirts, scarves, beads, pants, hats—and have explicitly told children that they can dress up in anything they want. Children’s (or adults’) objections that “Miguel is wearing girl’s clothes” are responded to quickly (but gently) with the reminder that “In our class, anyone can wear whatever they want — and I think that Miguel looks really wonderful in the purple blouse and beads.” Children’s music also provides opportunities for teaching about diversity in many forms and about teasing and exclusion and ways to counteract them. The Children’s Music Network (n.d.) has rich resources of children’s music that directly and indirectly addresses issues of social justice and inclusion. A new project, Know Better, Do Better (n.d.), provides children’s songs that can be used as alternatives for songs with racist origins and images. A children’s album entitled Trans and Non-Binary Kids’ Mix has a track entitled “Dress Up and Dance” (Rothman et  al., 2020) which includes the lyrics “Your body is your own, you can decorate it how you like. No matter your body parts, you’re a beautiful sight.” Purnell et al. (2007) explore how instructors can integrate early literacy skills and the arts to cultivate cultural appreciation in the early childhood classroom. They share examples of books that represent a wide variety of

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cultures and identities with suggestions for implementation and conclude that: Children feel emotionally secure when they find themselves, and those they love, positively represented in curriculum materials. Culturally responsive teachers create learning environments that respectfully reflect each child’s home culture, while inviting children to accept and explore cultures which are unfamiliar to them. (424)

Feeling at home requires careful attention to what is taught through both the stated curriculum and the often-hidden curriculum. Rosenberg (2020) broadens the discipline of social studies to show how early childhood teachers have integrated issues of cultural diversity, anti-­ discrimination, human rights, community and society, and points to the challenges of providing young children with broad information without positing a generic home or conveying biased information and stereotypical views. Assuming that there is one home-like setting that can be represented in an early childhood setting constitutes a form of erasure, a misguided enactment of the myth of colorblindness. Rather than assuming a one-home-fits-all standard, we must be explicit in representing and naming differences. Denying differences runs the risk of making children who do not have dominant social identities invisible. A children’s book, entitled My Bed: Enchanting Ways to Fall Asleep Around the World (Bond & Mavor, 2020), shows fiber-art representations of the many ways children sleep around the world. The book depicts children in Brazil sleeping in hammocks, children in Afghanistan sleeping on hand-woven rugs on the floor, and children in North African sleeping on air-cooled rooftop gardens. The text explains the many ways that sleeping spaces are heated, how sleeping locations may move as people migrate and the various combinations of co-sleeping and family beds. The gorgeous illustrations encourage deep observation and discussion and powerfully resist homogenizing illustrations of beds and sleeping. Husband (2016) argues that discourses of colorblindness make it difficult to identify racism and “allow(s) teachers to avoid and conceal racial issues that are alive and well within many schools and classrooms” (8). There is also evidence that the effects of colorblind ideologies and practices “can potentially decrease a student’s sensitivity to issues of racial injustice” (Husband, 2016: 9). Regimes of colorblindness or other forms of difference denial affect not only caregivers, but also impede children’s

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abilities to see discrimination and their abilities to become active allies in responding to prejudice and discrimination. Young children must develop critical awareness of diversity and oppression, if they are to be and become adults who resist bias and work to create more equitable, just environments throughout their lives.

(But) Being Knowledgeable About Diversity Isn’t the Same as Accepting Inequity Implementing an anti-bias approach does not end, however, with acceptance and understanding of multiple diversities and strategies of inclusion. Children, their families, and their life experiences vary in many ways. We can name differences in race, gender, ethnicity, language, religion, physical size and skills, dis/abilities, sexual orientation, socio-economic status and family structure. Eliminating prejudice and discrimination against any individual because of their identities or life situation is a key commitment of a social justice approach. Progressive educators seek to end oppression based on skin color, for example, and to disrupt stereotypical assumptions about what constitutes a good family. We seek to prepare teachers who use culturally informed strategies and who help their young students and their parents to be knowledgeable about and accepting of multiple diversities (Boutte, 2008). Teacher education in many places now centers issues of inclusion, diversity, access and equity. My constant question to my students is this: How will this particular policy, practice, structure of curriculum be experienced by the most marginalized child in your class? Asking (and answering this question) has averted many mis-steps and deepened the awareness of those who make daily decisions about children’s education. But not all kinds of diversities of home and family are ones we want to normalize or celebrate. What if your home is the site of abuse? Violence? Yelling and fighting? What if the word “home” doesn’t evoke images or feelings of safety or warmth or connection? What if you are a child who is living in a car, on the street, or in a homeless shelter? How do we help young children navigate inequities they experience or observe without co-­ opting the language of diversity? A student teacher in our teacher education program who was placed in a kindergarten classroom in a diverse urban district witnessed a young child who came to school distressed after seeing children living in boxes

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on the street. This child had lots of questions for her teacher: Why are those children living in boxes? Do they go to school? How do they go to the bathroom? Where do they get food? The teacher, uncomfortable with both the observed situation and the child’s questions, responded, “Well, we all live in different kinds of houses.” This response may have been appropriate had a child asked about children who live in trailers or apartments or places other than the free-standing individual homes they were familiar with. But dismissing the terrible injustices embedded in being unhoused with a glib statement that we live in different houses did nothing to affirm the child’s distress or to begin a discussion about (at minimum) what could be done for or with these children. Iruka et al. (2020) ask teachers to make a strong commitment to initiating and extending conversations about differences and inequalities rather than avoiding them or shutting them down with platitudes. They recommend that children’s challenging questions and comments should be responded to honestly in ways designed to teach rather than to silence or punish. Van der Klift and Kunc (1994) outline the multiple ways in which society responds to diversity. According to Table 1, the highest goal is to value diversity and accept it as normal. This framing is still powerfully relevant. When contrasted with intolerance, hatred, or discrimination, valuing diversity is a huge improvement. And rejecting narrow and problematic definitions of normal is critical to anti-oppressive education. But it is also important to interrogate the goal of valuing diversity relative to what kinds of diversity we are addressing. Robinson and Diaz (2005) point out that: When tolerance and acceptance of difference are emphasized at the expense of critiquing the relationships between difference, power and inequity, our capacity to work towards a pedagogical agenda that addresses the various social inequities based on ‘difference’ is limited. (71) Table 1  Ways in which society responds to diversity Category of response

Consequences

Marginalization Reform Tolerance Valuing (Diversity as Normal)

Segregation; Avoidance; Aggression Assimilation; Rehabilitation Resignation; Benevolence Equal Worth; Mutual Benefit; Belonging

Van der Klift & Kunc (1994)

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And hooks (1997: 166) states that “Evocations of pluralism and diversity act to obscure differences arbitrarily imposed and maintained by white racist domination.” How do we teach and value diversity without erasing situations and conditions which are unfair, unjust or simply intolerable? At a concrete level, consider the following: We want children to understand that people eat different foods; we want them to be curious (and not judgmental) about the child who brings rice and vegetables for their lunch or the child whose lunch during Passover includes matzo instead of bread. But is NO lunch a kind of lunch? Certainly, we want to instill understanding and appreciation about the many foods that children eat, but a different response should be called for when children find out that Matthew has NO lunch, or only a bag of chips from the vending machine. We want children to know that people live in many kinds of structures: houses, apartments, communes, and trailers. We want to push against classist judgments about “nice homes” that are based on stereotypical middle/upper class housing options. But is being homeless/unhoused a form of housing? How do we shift from benign statements that “We all live in different kinds of houses” to “Carla lives in a box on the street and that’s a real problem in our community?” How do we help children learn to name injustice and see possibilities for allyship and advocacy? We want children to be fluent and expansive in their definitions of families; some children have siblings, some have step-siblings, some children have single moms or multiple moms. There are children in foster families and those who live with relatives. We hope to establish that there are many ways to make a family (birth, adoption, surrogacy, etc.) and that many kinds of families can be loving and nurturing. But is being in a family in which you are beaten or abused a kind of family or is that a situation in which children need help and support as they try to understand what is happening and as they are assisted (we hope) to have those family conditions changed in some way?

What does it mean to work actively not just for diverse representation, but also to address inequities and injustice so that all children feel safe and at home? Kincheloe and Steinberg (1997) cited in Robinson and Diaz (2005: 65) explain that: While cultural pluralism embodies recognition of cultural difference, it has a limited commitment to equality of opportunities, and the frameworks for

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challenging the social, legitimized and institutional inequalities based on “difference” are also limited.… [and] much of the criticism around pluralist multiculturalism highlights the fact that while cultural differences can be appreciated and tolerated, the structural inequalities that marginalize cultural and racial minority groups from institutional and social power are reproduced.

Boutte (2008: 170) proposes that social justice pedagogy must include strategies that are: (1) grounded in the lives of our students; (2) critical; (3) multicultural, antiracist and pro-justice; (4) participatory and experiential; (5) hopeful, joyful, kind and visionary; (6) activist; (7) academically rigorous; and (8) culturally sensitive. Strategies (2), (3), (6) and (8) speak directly to the call for broader, more honest and accurate representations of diversity and in images and invocations of home. Boutte suggests that teachers and caregivers encourage children’s curiosity and to be honest in responding to their questions. Boutte believes that teachers have an obligation to present and represent diversities that expand what children may currently be experiencing. She concludes, “Classrooms can be places where we give students glimpses of the kind of society we can live in beyond what we may currently envision” (171).

What Makes an Educational Setting Safe? There are many kinds of safety. Standard definitions include framing safety in terms of being safe from “the occurrence or risk of injury, danger, or loss” (dictionary.com) or as “a concept that includes all measures and practices taken to preserve the life, health, and bodily integrity of individuals” (safeopedia.com). Physical safety is often addressed in ECE directly: latches on cabinets, padding underneath the swing set, the absence of sharp objects, etc. These speak to the goal of not wanting children to be physically hurt. Safety can also speak to the need that children have to be free from other challenges to their well-being: violence, food insecurity and lack of housing. There are contradictions to how the COVID-19 pandemic reportedly affected home safety. One study (Mann, 2021) found that physical abuse of school-­ aged kids tripled during the early months of the pandemic when widespread stay-at-home orders were in effect. Contradictory evidence reported no increase in abuse, arguing that “daycare centers for little kids

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were considered essential and remained open, which allowed some families to function, but older kids were stuck at home” (para 13). Another study (Rapp et al., 2021) reported that the pandemic has exacerbated factors that contribute to child mistreatment. They attribute this increase to the fact that for parents, quarantines and mandatory stay-at-­ home orders have led to high rates of unemployment, difficulties in relationships, increased rates of depression, and unsurmountable stress: “Emerging research has suggested that parents experiencing pandemic-­ related social isolation report an increase in verbal aggression, physical punishment such as spanking or hitting, and neglectful behaviors toward their children” (para 3). According to a report by the Children’s Defense Fund (2023) nearly 1.3 million children under six were homeless in 2016. One in five of the nearly 553,000 people experiencing homelessness on a single night in January 2018 were children (United States Health and Human Services 2022). Food insecurity for U.S. children also increased significantly in 2020. The percent of U.S. households with children that were food insecure reached 14.8 percent in 2020, or 5.6 million households, up from 13.6 percent in 2019 (Hales & Coleman-Jensen, 2022). Despite differences in how and whether early childhood settings mitigated or increased safety, implementing safety for children requires addressing their needs for a safe place to live, adequate nutrition and the absence of child mistreatment or abuse. While those needs are basic and foundational, they are not sufficient to creating the idealized home-like environment. Psychological safety demands attention to providing educational settings that promote a child’s sense of connection and belonging. Safety in an ECE setting includes feeling seen and represented in the furnishings, curricula and language of the center. More concretely, safety can be articulated as “I feel safe when I feel seen” or “I feel safe when I see my culture, language, family, cultural objects and music represented in my learning environment and when my caregivers are familiar with ALL of who I am.” One educator shares: infants and toddlers are usually most comfortable in their homes – and why not? That is the place where they are loved most of all! In addition to their homes, may infants and toddlers spend time in family child care, center-base care, or other groups care settings. When the spaces where infants and toddler spend their time bring in elements of their home it sends the message that ‘this is a place where you, your family, and your culture will be respected

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and valued.” (United States Department of Health and Human Services, 2021: para 1)

Again, however, this citation of home as the place where people are the most comfortable and feel respected and valued problematically posits an idealized, universal home. In a blog post on homelike environments, Bergman (2011) explains: …when parents see images in the center similar to those in their own homes, they feel more comfortable leaving their children there. And when the workplace is warm and welcoming, staff are more relaxed and able to focus on the important work they do. (para 13)

Most explicitly, according to this website the classroom should represent those who live there. If you walk into a classroom on a Saturday, the environment should provide clues as to who enjoys the space on Monday through Friday. Elements of children and family (photos, names, artwork), as well as culture (materials and artifacts) should grace the classroom space. This particular display might not only include family photos, but also include each child’s depiction of their own family. (Grant, 2018: para 5)

Emotional safety, what one would want in a home, includes freedom from teasing, exclusion and bullying. I argue that emotional safety also includes freedom from what are often called micro-aggressions and micro-­ exclusions. I find these terms problematic because it is not clear who has the power to name or minimize certain hurts. Failure to fully represent and include all children, their families and their identities are forms of aggression and exclusion. Providing for emotional safety includes reassurances to children and their families that they will not be left out; can see themselves represented; will not be diminished for who they are; and know that challenges will be named and addressed. Hegemonic conceptions of home and the failure to adequately represent diversity make both differences and oppressions invisible. If we want school settings to be fully home-like we must make intentional efforts to create safe and welcoming homes through explicit representation and diversity. Implementation of an anti-bias approach that directly addresses

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how fairly and lovingly children (and adults) are treated in the environment will help create the homes we yearn for. And, not only do we want ECE to represent safety and diversity but we must embrace the dialectic powers that would position educational environments as instrumental forces in creating a just and equitable world for all.

References Bergman, R. (2011). Homelike environments. Community Playthings. https:// www.communityplaythings.com/resources/articles/2011/home-­l ike-­ environments Bond, R., & Mavor, S. (2020). My bed: Enchanting ways to fall asleep around the world. Houghton Mifflin, Harcourt. Boutte, G. (2008). Beyond the illusion of diversity: How early childhood teachers can promote social justice. The Social Studies, 99(4), 165–173. https://doi. org/10.3200/TSSS.99.4.165-­173 Cadence Education. (2021, January 15). Why is a homelike environment important for children. https://www.cadence-­education.com/blog/uncategorized/why-­ is-­a-­homelike-­environment-­important-­for-­children/ Children’s Defense Fund. (2023). The state of America’s children® 2020: Housing and homelessness. https://www.childrensdefense.org/policy/resources/soac2020-housing/ Children’s Music Network. (n.d.). https://childrensmusic.org/ Community Roots Charter School. (n.d.). Philosophy. https://communityroots. org/about/philosophy Derman-Sparks, L., & Edwards, J. O. (2010). Anti-bias education for young children and ourselves. National Association for the Education of Young Children. http://www.tulibro915.com/uploads/1/2/5/5/12552697/anti_bias_ education.pdf Dictionary.com. (n.d.). https://www.dictionary.com/browse/safety Farago, F. (2017). Anti-bias or not: A case study of two early childhood educators. Faculty Publications, 27. https://scholarworks.sfasu.edu/humansci_ facultypubs/27.2017 Grant, L. (2018). School sweet school: Creating home-like, community-centered early childhood environments. Early Childhood by Design. https://earlychildhoodbydesign.com/school-­s weet-­s chool-­c reating-­h ome-­l ike-­c ommunity-­ centered-­early-­childhood-­environments/ Grant, C. A., & Sleeter, C. E. (2007). Making choices for multicultural education: Five approaches to race, class and gender (6th ed.). Wiley.

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Hales, L., & Coleman-Jensen, A. (2022). Food insecurity for households with children rose in 2020, disrupting decade-long decline. United States Department of Agriculture. https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-­waves/2022/february/ food-­i nsecurity-­f or-­h ouseholds-­w ith-­c hildren-­r ose-­i n-­2 020-­d isrupting-­ decade-­long-­decline/ Happy Little Tadpole. (n.d.). https://happylittletadpole.com/ Husband, T. (2016). Ignorance is not bliss: Moving beyond colorblind perspectives and practices in education. In T. Husband (Ed.), But I don’t see color: The perils, practices, and possibilities of antiracist education (pp. 3–19). Sense. Iruka, I., Curenton, S.  M., Durden, T.  R., & Escayg, K.  A. (2020). Don’t look away: Embracing anti-bias classrooms. Gryphon House. Kincheloe, J.  L., & Steinberg, S.  R. (1997). Changing multiculturalism. Open University Press. Know better. Do better. (n.d.). https://knowbetterdobetter.com Mann, D. (2021, October 8). Study: Child abuse rose during COVID pandemic. U.S. News and World Report. https://www.usnews.com/news/health-­news/ articles/2021-­1 0-­0 8/study-­c onfirms-­r ise-­i n-­c hild-­a buse-­d uring-­c ovid-­ pandemic Phillips, A. (2022, April 8). Florida’s law limiting LGBTQ discussion in schools, explained. The Washington Post. https://defendinged.org/wp-­content/ u p l o a d s / 2 0 2 2 / 0 4 / W h a t -­i s -­F l o r i d a s -­D o n t -­S a y -­G a y -­b i l l _ -­T h e -­ Washington-­Post.pdf Purnell, P. G., Ali, P., Begum, N., & Carter, M. (2007). Windows, bridges and mirrors: Building culturally responsive early childhood classrooms through the integration of literacy and the arts. Early Childhood Education Journal, 34(6), 419–424. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10643-­007-­0159-­6 Rapp, A., Fall, G., Radomsky, A. C., & Santarossa, S. (2021). Child maltreatment during the COVID-19 pandemic. Pediatric Clinics of North America, 68(5), 991–1009. Robinson, K. H., & Diaz, C. J. (2005). Diversity and difference in early childhood education: Issues for theory and practice. McGraw-Hill Education. Rosenberg, A. R. (2020). Social studies in early childhood education and care: A scoping review focusing on diversity. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 21(4), 312–324. Rothman, C., & Rainbow Train & Mighty Flipside. (2020). Dress up and dance. Bandcamp. https://antsonalog.bandcamp.com/track/dress-­up-­and-­dance Safeopedia. (n.d.). https://www.safeopedia.com/definition/1104/safety-­ occupational-­health-­and-­safety Sapon-Shevin, M. (2017). On the impossibility of learning “Not to see”: Colorblindness, invisibility, and anti-bias education. International Critical Childhood Policy Studies, 6(1), 38–51.

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Scarlet, R.  R. (2016). The anti-bias approach in early childhood (3rd ed.). Pademelon Press. Swadener, E. B. (1988). Implementation of education that is multicultural in early childhood settings: A case study of two day-care programs. The Urban Review, 20(1), 8–27. United States Department of Health & Human Services. (2021). News you can use: Learning at home and homelike environments. Head Start Early Childhood Learning and Knowledge Center. https://eclkc.ohs.acf.hhs.gov/learning-­ environments/ar ticle/news-­y ou-­c an-­u se-­l earning-­h ome-­h omelike-­ environments United States Department of Health & Human Services. (2022). Child homelessness: A growing crisis. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. https://www.samhsa.gov/homelessness-­programs-­resources/ hpr-­resources/child-­homelessness-­growing-­crisis Van der Klift, E. & Kunc, N. (1994). Hell-bent on helping: Benevolence, friendship, and the politics of help. In J. S. Thousand, R. A Villa, & A. Nevin (Eds.), Creative and collaborative learning: A practical guide to empowering students and teachers, (pp. 391-340). Brookes Publishing.

Home or Homelessness: A Diffractive Re-articulation of Teacher Otherness Sonja Arndt

The question of home is important in many ways. What is home when we move from one place to another, one country, one town, even one particular setting to another? Recognizing that from various perspectives and through various theoretical lenses home cannot be universalized, and that diverse viewpoints and experiences may be similar, but maybe even simultaneously opposing, this chapter makes an effort to articulate conceptions of Otherness and how they might affect the notion and treatments of home. It blurs some of the boundaries of conceptions of the self and the Other and raises potentialities that can arise in readings and re-readings resulting from such blurrings. Framed within this book, the notion of home is related here to orientations towards home in early childhood settings, and to the ways in which teacher orientations affect the experiences of the young children with whom they spend their days. Critically, teachers’ orientations towards the self, Other and home also affect a less often considered aspect, namely their encounters and relationships amongst the

S. Arndt (*) Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Gibbons et al. (eds.), Home in Early Childhood Care and Education, Critical Cultural Studies of Childhood, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43695-6_4

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cultural and conceptual multiplicities and complexities within their teaching teams. Teachers’ orientations to what home is or might be, for themselves and for others, are therefore at the root of the chapter. This foundation rests on the idea that orientations and pedagogies never arise in isolation, and that they are never static. Instead, it follows the argument that teachers’ orientations and pedagogies in early childhood settings are necessarily shaped by the histories, realities and ongoing constructions of their own identities and teacher subjectivities. Unless they are of Indigenous descent, bearing witness to over 60,000 years of history in Australia, teachers in this country most likely have ties to another part of the world—either themselves or through other members of their family. Many early childhood teachers have immigrated to Australia as adults themselves (Arndt & Bartholomaeus, 2022). They have left their homelands for various reasons: political, family, educational, economic, to seek a better life, to escape violence, or for work opportunities. In their homelands, home may be framed by geographic, societal, political and cultural parameters, positioned as a notion that is normalized in certain ways in that locality. When they move, however, their experiences may not replicate these conditions in the same way, leaving instead what perhaps may feel like a sense of loss—construed as either something negative or positive. The concept of what home is becomes disrupted. Such a disruption raises questions about what home really was in the homeland. What was it expected to be? What accompanies teachers, that is rebuilt or freshly developed in their new locality? What does or should home look and feel like in a new environment, and how can we even imagine responses to these questions? This chapter’s exploration of conceptions of home delves into how these conceptions might be sensed through teachers’ ongoing identity constructions. It uses Kristeva’s (1991, 1998) questioning of the self, especially the idea that subjects are constantly in construction and foreigners to themselves. This in itself raises crucial provocations to consider and articulate as notions of home are complex, multiple and also always shifting. Further, the chapter draws on Kristeva’s thinking as a bridge towards a more-than-human reading of home and Braidotti’s (2019) posthuman thought as a guide. Kristeva’s philosophy on the notion of the foreigner rests on particular elements of subject formation that support disruption of narrow conceptions of the Other. In this way her philosophy creates fresh openings for conceptualizing home that shift beyond the human realm. Shifting attitudes and orientations towards difference, familiarity

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and the self in this way provokes interrogations of agentic, material relationalities with the self and with the wider local or greater environment that shape conceptions of home. Linear, objective and singular thinking is no longer useful, Braidotti (2019) cautions. This caution underlies the chapter’s concerns to move beyond human-centric elevations of power and control, and beyond established or narrow conceptions of home. As Braidotti suggests, a posthuman framing creates valuable ways to resituate, de-elevate, but not remove, the human (Ulmer, 2017). A Barad (2014) diffractive reading of diverse perspectives through one another, underlies the thinking in this chapter, and conceptions of home in diverse early childhood and societal contexts, are the subject of this philosophical endeavour. To serve as a reconceptualization of home as a way to rethink equitable treatments of the Other in early childhood settings, however, first requires a teasing out of ontological positionings towards diversity.

Early Childhood Settings and Diversity Diversity is often construed as a problem in early childhood settings. Dominant treatments in early education and wider mandates might position this problem as arising from conflicts or misunderstandings between diverse cultures, religions, backgrounds and histories, or from narrow orientations towards diversity (Baldock, 2010; Cherrington & Shuker, 2012; Todd, 2011). An example of this is the European Commission’s strategic objective (2022) which calls for teachers to be well-prepared to promote “equity, social cohesion and active citizenship”. This appears to suggest that potential conflicts may be possible to avert, through solutions that include developing intercultural understandings through dialogue. Critically questioning this ontological positioning towards solutions to the complexities of diverse ways of being in early childhood settings—as argued for by Arndt (2015, 2018), Todd (2011), and more recently, Gide et al. (2022), to name a few—elevates Otherness beyond what can easily be classified into any particular defined “diversity”, such as culture, religion, background or history. Todd (2011), for example, argues for a consideration of pluralism, taking from Batelaan (2003 cited in Todd, 2011: 103) as a way of doing “justice to diversity”. An epistemological questioning of Otherness through reconceptualizing diversity shifts any potential solution, answer or treatment beyond what can be achieved through particular strategies, toolkits or, indeed, dialogue (Arndt, 2017).

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Solutions, answers or specific treatments depend on knowing the nature of a problem. However, as reconceptualist scholars have long argued (see for example, Bloch et al., 2018), this is not so easy, given that neither children nor their “diversities” can be simply labelled, compartmentalized, or categorized. Certain common constructions of diversity might actually feed into the “problem”. What follows is this chapter’s attempt at turning around a view of diversity as a problem to re-consider ontological positionings towards hopeful ways of being and towards home. Using a diffractive, relational theorization blurs human and more-than-human boundaries within ideas of teacher subjectivities, Otherness, and home.

Blurring Human—More-Than-Human Boundaries Intra-relating human and more-than-human conceptions of home blurs epistemological and ethical boundaries. A critical more-than-human way of thinking, following Braidotti, is an ethical undertaking that opens up to conceptualizations that reach beyond what is known, can be knowable or, importantly from an ethical standpoint, should be knowable. It does this by disrupting human-centric, Western, patriarchal ways of knowing. Reading Kristevan notions of Otherness through the vitality and material agency of non-human relationships with matter, things and beings, is where “thinking involves the creation of new concepts and adequate figurations to express them” (Braidotti, 2019: 123). New conceptualizations and figurations to express them are crucial within the professional environment of early childhood care and education curricula which commonly urges teachers to nurture a sense of cultural belonging in the children in their settings. In this environment scant attention is paid to the teachers’ own sense of belonging and home in curriculum frameworks. Reconceptualizing teachers’ sense of home is therefore not only a contentious but an ethically fraught and urgent area for sensitive consideration (Arndt, 2018; Arndt & Bartholomaeus, 2022; Gide et al., 2022). In this philosophical re-reading of home there can be no solution, it is more likely to provoke and elevate ongoing disruptions of singular, dominant conceptualizations of teacher Otherness and their intra-relationalities with home. Barad’s (2014) suggestion of critical diffractive thinking as a feminist engagement supports this philosophical endeavour. It offers a crucial exercise for seeking increasingly equitable insights and senses of home for teachers and their early childhood settings.

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Teachers’ sense of home might depend on who they are in a particular place, to particular people, and who they are to themselves. Being at home might be seen discursively, focused for instance as stated in a passport, in an address, on local body electoral roles, educational enrolments and so on. These boundaries classify and delineate who belongs, and who doesn’t (Arvanitis et al., 2019). A Kristevan questioning blurs boundaries, in keeping with what Bauman (2009) might call a state of liquid modernity and raises instead multiple questions: What is the meaning of home, in such a fluid state, when a teacher is not at home, does not belong within the local early childhood setting or community, or wider society? As a British colony, Australia is not alone in experiencing the greatest diversity in its history in many of its cities (Gide et al., 2022). Migration, whether voluntary or not, leads to confrontations with Otherness where questions might arise in relation to what is home, when it is blurred, and not just a sense of place, a building, the land, geographic, or physical? What might teachers think about then if they see home as a sense, strong yet intangible? In particular what might teachers’ sense mean for children, families and the wider community in early childhood settings that come from diverse backgrounds? Teachers’ diverse backgrounds might position them as Other in their early childhood settings, and in Australian society, as seeking, experiencing and working out the rituals of meetings, connections, hospitality, dress and acceptable responses to usual practices (Kristeva, 1991). Re-reading Otherness through this blurring lens affirms its importance and its implications. Kristeva’s (1991) conceptions of the foreigner affirm the ontological positioning raised earlier, where diversity is seen as a problem that needs fixing. The Other, foreigner, might cause resentment, even fear, as, in feeling not-at-home, they may behave, feel, and think differently to the dominant expectations in society. When seen as a problem, the foreigner might cause feelings of “a choked-up rage”, “a black angel” (Kristeva, 1991: 1) who is difficult to know and difficult to understand. The foreigner, stranger, outsider who comes from a different place or is in other ways Other, causes an unwanted disturbance, an anxiety, a rupture in everyday comforts and routines. This view posits the foreigner as unfamiliar, unpredictable, undesirable. Kristeva’s (1991) challenge lies in recognizing a certain level of Otherness as something that is within everybody. Everybody, she claims, is Other not only to those around them, but also to themselves.

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Identity: Open and Evolving Through a Kristevan lens all subjects are always in process. So, teachers are always “infinitely in construction, de-constructible, open and evolving” (Kristeva, 2008: 2). As teachers constantly evolve, their memories, constructions and hopes of and for home become unsettled. Through telling and re-telling their stories, living and re-living experiences, their identities undergo new, open and evolving constructions. Drawing away from the idea of reflection as merely showing what has already occurred, Barad’s (2014) notion of diffraction offers a useful conceptual support for a feminist examination of identity and Otherness. Its importance lies in its offering of potentialities, by re-turning – not by returning as in reflecting on or going back to a past that was, but re-turning as in turning it over and over again – iteratively intra-­ acting, re-diffracting, diffracting anew, in the making of new temporalities (spacetimematterings), new diffraction patterns. (Barad, 2014: 168)

Supporting a troubling of truths, tensions and normalizing discourses emanating from neoliberal, outcomes-driven expectations, diffraction offers a further ethical impetus to question the need to “know” people, to know about people, and, by extension, to know particular “truths” about home. A Kristeva (1991) orientation offers a recognition of Otherness as unknowable through its dominant elements of the semiotic, love, abjection and revolt. Situated in liquid modern realities, oversaturated already with unprocessed information, variations and seductions (Bauman, 2009), reading diffractively through the more-than-human offers a creative disturbance to conceptions of Otherness and home using Kristeva’s elements as provocations.

The Surrounding Context For Kristeva the surrounding context affects the subject in what she terms the semiotic. The semiotic refers to an inner space that recognizes the nuances, rhythms, tones and complexities that arise in the drives and energy that shift and collide within each individual. The semiotic indicates then, that teachers are always in relation, with their environment, with what is around them, whether human or nonhuman, thing, being, organic or inorganic. The semiotic is the element that gives rise to pleasures,

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desires, fears, disgust, or hatred however, it does not do this in an event, feeling or identifiable thing that can be captured. Rather, the semiotic lies mostly in the unconscious, and gives meaning—in ways that teachers are not able to hold on to or necessarily describe. In this way, then, the semiotic counters homogeneity and what is knowable, the stasis, the stability of control and the predictable (Oliver, 2002). It recognizes the complexity that underlies the known, conscious, structure of home, the stability of belonging, by acknowledging that such meaning “is not the unified product of a unified subject” but rather, the semiotic recognizes that “meaning is Other and as such makes the subject other to itself” (Oliver, 2002: xviii). The semiotic thus makes way for a diffractive re-turning—turning over conceptions of the teacher-self, and their conceptions of home. In its turning over, the meaning making of the semiotic makes space for re-reading the next element in Kristeva’s subject in process (Stone, 2004)—the notion of love. Love The foundation of meaning making that occurs through intra-­relationalities between the semiotic and the surrounding context is love. As an ethical construct, love is imaginable through Kristeva’s conception of the foreigner as an inner drive to believe in, and to care, reflecting teachers’ moral, ethical commitments, to children and their families and wider early childhood communities. Love and care in early childhood settings are complex and multi-layered, feeding directly into conceptions of home that they raise. Highlighting and foregrounding the vulnerabilities that arise in diverse conceptions of care, Ailwood et  al. (2021) illustrate what this might look like on a relational level, between the teachers involved, on the level of meaning, integrating policy, curriculum and the societal messiness of the concept and the ethics of care. Such vulnerabilities might exacerbate and challenge notions of love as they simultaneously defamiliarize themselves from known conceptions of home, as a tool to “disengage themselves from the dominant normative vision of the self they had become accustomed to” (Braidotti, 2019: 139). For Kristeva (1991) the vulnerability of such an exposure might lead to teachers’ sense of unknowableness. From both perspectives, this is a critical and humbling realization, leading to the insight that, as Other to themselves, teachers will be “spared [from] detesting [the Other foreigner] in himself” (1). Love is closely intra-related with Kristeva’s notion of abjection.

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Abjection Abjection literally refers to expulsion—a rejection of what has become or maybe always has been—superfluous, unnecessary. It can be seen as a decolonizing act of defamiliarizing oneself from known experiences, senses or surroundings. Along with the semiotic and love, the notion of abjection may be an unknowable occurrence, that constantly re-constructs the foreigner subject unconsciously and unpredictably (Kristeva, 1998). Drawing on gut feelings, the difficult to pin down sensations that nevertheless cause individuals to avert, distort, pursue and elevate, or abandon, actions, particular practices or beliefs, the notion of abjection breaks the mould, as it conveys meaning and significance, and goes beyond what is known or expected. By othering teachers, abjection heterogenizes expectations and transgresses rules, through the fluid, unknown energies that “move through the body of the subject” (Kristeva, 1984: 93). These re-­ constructions are not limited to the mind, they are non-dichotomous, non-linear, bodily and more-than-bodily experiences. Such re-constructions push away certainties, creating within individuals the bodily and more-than-bodily, more-than-human unfamiliarity, where teachers themselves are unknown, unpredictable, in what has been described as an “uncanny strangeness” (Kristeva, 1991: 83). Read diffractively through Barad’s (2014) description of difference, such an unknown does not represent a lack of meaning, but rather, as with the Kristevan notion of abjection, it is crucial for the formation of subjectivity, offering new spaces, new openings. If seen as a darkness, as in Barad’s work, this means there are new spaces for light. Even when abjection leads to a certain loss, of mourning for a past home, for example, the frightening, un-­ nameable sense that arises can be viewed as timeless and spaceless opening up a new space of hope and light—rather than slipping into a loss of a sense of home and emptiness. Revolt The final element of Kristeva’s philosophical disruption of a smooth, linear, humanly focused subject formation is the notion of revolt. Revolt is a state of ongoing questioning. In this instance it does not refer to a major revolt, intended to overthrow government or social rule. It is a crucial element of the meaning making and constant construction of the subject, involving the performance of affective, emotional, responses that may

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more appropriately be referred to as mini, or inner, revolts. Revolt arises from the sensual drives and impulses in developing subjectivities, forming subjects through its ongoing negotiation, abjecting that which is no longer relevant and forming of new and appropriate ways of being. Revolt is the processing of the “sense” of a situation, thing, or other being, and most of all that which is uncertain. This includes the conscious or unconscious questioning and making new spaces for reconceptualizations arising from turning and re-turning sensations of home. Thinking through notions of home as a human and more-than-human convergence raises new possibilities. When thinking involves creating new concepts and “adequate figurations to express them” (Braidotti, 2019: 123), revolt appears as an essential element through which to “do” the re-iterative reading, ongoing questioning, of attitudes of openness and acceptance to and of not only the Other, but of seeing home Other-wise. When Kristeva (1991: 1) claims that the foreigner, or Other, only “disappears when we all acknowledge ourselves as foreigners”, perhaps this suggests a necessary de-elevation of dominant conceptions not only of the knowable “I”, but of home? Digging up and re-thinking what home might, should or could mean, in a Barad (2014) diffractive way, through the creation of new concepts, then, means hearing, sensing, engaging with multiplicities and complexities of home. When “thinking is about acknowledging, capturing and working with extensive and intensive ethical relationality” (Braidotti, 2019: 123), the call must be for both a humility and sensitivity to the detail, to the intra-relationships in and with the self, with and as other/s and home.

Homelessness: Calling Ourselves into Question Thinking diffractively about the notion of home draws teachers into question as subjects in process and as unknown and unknowable. Putting this Kristevan lens on subject formation in relation with Braidotti’s human-­ posthuman knowledges gives new ways of articulating teachers’ situations. It urges an ongoing questioning that thrusts teachers into the complexities of diverse conceptions—human and nonhuman—of their own intra-­ relationalities. As subjects in process teachers are not only never completely products only of their own experiences, but rather they are always affected, shaped by the beings, things and environments around them. They are always split subjects, that must “call [them]selves (continually) into question” (Stone, 2004: 124). Might it be that unknown to themselves,

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teachers are not able to know their own at home-ness, and in this sense, are they perhaps always and constantly homeless, as a result of their sense of home being in constant construction along with their subjectivity? What would this mean, for constructions of home in early childhood settings, when there is an inner feeling that teachers are no longer who they once were? Perhaps they never were who they thought they were or are. Did that version of themselves even exist, as they thought it did? Or were they mistaken, living under some kind of illusion, only to expose it once they moved to a different place, space, or imaginary sense? Barad’s (2014) idea of diffraction is not temporally bound, but rather it is a re-­ iterative process: “There is no absolute boundary between here-now and there-then” (168). Diffraction is not a set pattern, but rather a “(re)configuring of patterns of differentiating-entangling” (168). Whether home is an inner sense of belonging, or not, it brings to the fore what Kristeva highlights a teacher’s “foreigner within” as an entangled, intra-related encounter with time, matter, things and beings in the early childhood setting and the humans and nonhumans in and beyond it—each already in relation with itself, and with known or unknown others. Drawing on Kristeva’s work helps us to understand home as not only affecting but constructed by a person’s sense of self. This sense is mostly fluid, can include the feeling of being removed from one’s origins, or from the home (or mother-) land, or from any safe, known, past. Such a removal from home can feel like a “demented whirl” (Kristeva, 1991: 6) of dramatic highs and lows, where a teacher may never exclusively feel that they are in one or the other state, at home or not at home, but somewhere blurred, liminal, in between—in the demented whirl. Together with Kristeva’s notion of revolt, a Barad (2014) re-iterative diffractive reading, gives hope that this state is fluid, passing, with the re-turning and constant questioning as new elements, new senses, new beings, or new experiences emerge. The Kristevan notion of abjection helps teachers to shed fresh light on ways of unknowing both home and homelessness, expelling and making way, in a sense akin to Barad’s claim that darkness makes way for new light.

Concluding Comments This chapter offers critical entry points towards rethinking home. Positing attitudes of openness and acceptance to and of the Other, it has used a relational diffraction of subject formation, to reconceptualize treatments

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of the Other, notions of the self and of what home might mean in early childhood settings when teachers, children and families come from diverse backgrounds. While underlying attitudes and orientations towards Otherness emerge as complex, undefinable and unknowable, reading Kristeva through the thinking of Barad and Braidotti offers hopeful conceptual spaces for re-articulations of home. Theorized through an intra-­ relational reading of Kristeva’s notion of the foreigner, it uses her philosophical thinking on the subject as constantly and ongoingly in formation, alongside Braidotti’s posthuman thought, to elevate home as a notion that is also constantly fluid, in flux, forming and adjusting. Throughout the chapter the idea that the foreigner lives within us emerges as a humbling and empowering disruption to knowable expectations and strategies: it implores an ongoing, revolt-ful questioning of Otherness, home and teachers’ selves. This, therefore, is not a conclusion. It is an urge to engage with the ongoing evolution of constructions of home, in keeping with the ongoing evolution of teachers’ subject formations. Both evolutions, the chapter has argued, are shaped and always in relation with the things, beings and matter by which they are surrounded. Blurring boundaries of what is home is thus an equitable, feminist act to elevate constructions of home in relation to teachers, children and families from diverse backgrounds within early childhood settings and society. It requires an openness to what is not or maybe cannot be known to others, and to the senses flowing between memories, lives and agentic, material things. This chapter theorizes and plays out an openness—an invitation to embrace the uncertainty and vulnerability that comes with exposing unknowable forming identities that may be discussed in research but are much harder to enact. Finally, the chapter offers hope, through the suggestion that the unknown-ness evokes a call for constant questioning which can be seen as an abundance, rather than a loss, leading to multiple new conceptions of home amongst teachers and within early childhood settings.

References Ailwood, J., Arndt, S., Tesar, M., Aslanian, T., Gibbons, A., Lee, I.-F., & Heimer, L. (2021). Communities of care: A collective writing project on philosophies, politics, and pedagogies of care and education in the early years. Policy Futures in Education, 20(8). https://doi.org/10.1177/14782103211064440

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Arndt, S. (2015). Otherness ‘without ostracism or levelling’: Towards fresh orientations to teacher foreigners in early childhood education. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 47(9). https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2015.1035155 Arndt, S. (2017). Dialogic ruptures: An ethical imperative. Educational Philosophy and Theory, Special Issue: Bakhtin in the Fullness of Time, 49(9), 909–921. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2015.1135776 Arndt, S. (2018). Early childhood teacher cultural otherness and belonging. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood Special Issue: Interrogating Belonging in Diverse Early Years Settings, 19(4), 392–403. https://doi. org/10.1177/1463949118783382 Arndt, S., & Bartholomaeus, C. (2022). What about teachers’ cultures? Elevating early childhood teachers’ culture stories through a Kristevan lens. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood. https://doi.org/10.1177/14639491221141726 Arvanitis, E., Yelland, N. J., & Kiprianos, P. (2019). Liminal spaces of temporary dwellings: Transitioning to new lives in times of crisis. Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 33(1), 134–144. https://doi.org/10.1080/0256854 3.2018.1531451 Baldock, P. (2010). Understanding cultural diversity in the early years. Sage Barad, K. (2014). Diffracting diffraction: Cutting together apart. Parallax, 20(3), 168–187. https://doi.org/10.1080/13534645.2014.927623 Bauman, Z. (2009). Education in the liquid-modern setting. Power and Education, 1(2), 157–166. https://doi.org/10.2304/power.2009.1.2.157 Bloch, M. N., Swadener, B. B., & Cannella, G. S. (Eds.). (2018). Reconceptualizing early childhood education and care – A reader: Critical questions, new imaginaries & social activism (2nd ed.). Peter Lang. Braidotti, R. (2019). Posthuman knowledge. Polity Press. Cherrington, S., & Shuker, M. J. (2012). Diversity amongst New Zealand early childhood educators. New Zealand Journal of Teachers’ Work, 9(2), 76–94. European Commission. (2022). European education area. Retrieved from https:// education.ec.europa.eu/focus-­topics/improving-­quality/inclusive-­education Gide, S., Wong, S., Press, F., & Davis, B. (2022). Cultural diversity in the Australian early childhood education workforce: What do we know, what don’t we know and why is it important? Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, 47, 48–61. https://doi.org/10.1177/18369391211057292 Kristeva, J. (1984). Revolution in poetic language (M. Waller, Trans.). Columbia University Press. Kristeva, J. (1991). Strangers to ourselves. Columbia University Press. Kristeva, J. (1998). The subject in process. In P. Ffrench & R.-F. Lack (Eds.), The Tel Quel reader (pp. 133–178). Routledge. Kristeva, J. (2008). Does European culture exist?. Paper presented at the Dagmar and Václav Havel Foundation VIZE 97 prize, Prague Crossroads. Retrieved from http://www.vize.cz/download/laureat-­Julia-­Kristeva-­en-­speech.pdf

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Oliver, K. (2002). Kristeva’s revolutions. In K. Oliver (Ed.), The portable Kristeva (pp. xi–xxix). Columbia University Press. Stone, L. (2004). Julie Kristeva’s ‘mystery’ of the subject-in-process. In J.  D. Marshall (Ed.), Poststructuralism, philosophy, pedagogy (pp.  119–139). Kluwer Academic Publishers. Todd, S. (2011). Educating beyond cultural diversity: Redrawing the boundaries of a democratic plurality. Studies of Philosophy of Education, 30, 101–111. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-­010-­9215-­6 Ulmer, J. (2017). Posthumanism as research methodology: Inquiry in the Anthropocene. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 30(9), 832–848. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2017.1336806

Criminalization of the Right to Home for Palestinian Children Janette Habashi

Home is associated with security, it is the place where families, especially those with children, build relationships and grow together. Home is where we form our individual and group identities, attachments, sense of safety, and community. It is a space where an individual becomes part of a unit to foster mutual emotional and social support structure. The meaning of home goes beyond the mere physical structure and space, it holds memories, establishes roots, and solidifies prospects (Akesson et  al., 2016; Al-Hardan, 2017; Chatty, 2009; Mason, 2007). Home is a space where each child should be loved, accepted, and supported for individual growth. It is a space where they can belong and feel safe. Home is where memories and narratives are collected, constructed, and passed from one generation to the next. Home contextualizes one’s personality, behaviors, skills, and the narratives that build the bridge to the community and political discourse (Chatty, 2009; Mason, 2007).

J. Habashi (*) University of Oklahoma, Norman, OH, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Gibbons et al. (eds.), Home in Early Childhood Care and Education, Critical Cultural Studies of Childhood, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43695-6_5

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The concept of home and its association with the values listed above are embraced in early childhood settings. Educators of early childhood envision these values for each child as they enhance children’s emotional, social, and cognitive development. Based on this, early childhood educators implicitly and explicitly incorporate these values surrounding the concept of home in children’s daily interactions and classroom activities. For example, one value associated with home is that it provides a sense of community which early childhood educators incorporate in building a classroom environment. Another example is how the concept of home, as a place provides emotional support, and is foundational in building the skills for relationships between children in the classroom. In a way, the values associated with home are considered a standard in children’s development; the enactment of these values is expected and sought after for every child. In addition, embracing the concept of home in classrooms is essential since it facilitates the fundamentals of a child’s development not only during the early years but for years to come. These values are also significant in children’s membership in society in general (Bove & Sharmahd, 2020). Therefore, home is seen as an extension of society where children learn to belong to a group beyond their family (Al-Hardan, 2017; Chatty, 2009; Richter-Devroe, 2013). With its impact on individual development and community membership, educators and human rights activists value home as a human right, not only due to its inherent nature of providing shelter but because it goes beyond the physical space of a building. Childhood advocates consider home to be a core element in early development such that every child is entitled to a home and the fundamental support it provides (Akesson et al., 2016; Bove & Sharmahd, 2020; Bulut, 2022). This is an ambitious call because it is not reasonable to envision a singular reality for all children at all times. The truth is much harsher than that, and the challenge is paradoxical in nature. The right to home does not extend to every child, due to economic, environmental, or geopolitical circumstances as in the case of Palestinian children. This raises the question of how early childhood educators can embrace the concept of home in classroom activities, especially under war-­ like circumstances. The Palestinian community has no control over providing a home as a right for their children. Colonization and imperialist discrimination are the main reasons Palestinian children are denied such rights. For generations, Palestinian children’s right to home experiences have been framed within the context of war and active colonization (Akesson et al., 2016;

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Bulut, 2022). This reality shaped the concept of home for Palestinian children and grandchildren in education, early childhood development, and beyond. To understand this complex relationship between the right to home and Palestinian children it is vital to recognize how history, the geopolitical realities of oppression, and colonization manifested in the denial of the right to home, especially when the complex generational trauma of children is the result of home displacement, the refugee experience, and home demolition that is embedded in the denial of both the right to home or going back to home. This living trauma is passed on individually and collectively from one Palestinian generation to another with the support of the Israeli criminalization of Palestinians having a home. This chapter discusses how the complex generational trauma of continuing forceful expulsion is a reflection of Israeli practice to illegalize homes for Palestinian people. The denial of home for Palestinians creates a paradoxical reality presented in the illusion of supporting the concept of home in early childhood education while knowing that Palestinian children for generations have been displaced and criminalized for fighting for the right to home. Therefore, it is essential to deconstruct associated categories (criminalization and trauma) of home in relation to early childhood education.

Home as a Child’s Right Homes come in different shapes and forms but they are all designed to give children a sense of security and a space for healthy development. The physical structure of homes in Palestine reflects the landscape of the different habitats in which they can be found. For example, tents are considered to be the homes for nomadic people around the world and are specific to the Bedouin communities in the Middle East (Frantzman & Kark, 2011). Mud homes are connected to the earth as they are molded from it and are specific to each area in Palestine (Sheweka, 2011). Stone homes are also part of the landscape and are present in different historical and contemporary locations (Sheweka, 2011). The physical structure of the Palestinian home aims to provide the emotional, physical, and educational security needed for healthy children’s development. This is contrary to the fact that the structure of the home has been standardized in early childhood to model (Panikkar & Panikkar, 1982) Western architecture as the space to encapsulate the sentiment of a home. The Western structure of home marginalizes other cultural forms of home and enforces imperialism and Orientalist ideology (Panikkar & Panikkar, 1982). This standardization of

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home and other developmental aspects has been discussed and deconstructed in terms of children’s learning and cultural alienation (Grieshaber & Miller, 2010). Though the imperialist notion of the construct of a home is vital to unpack, especially in early childhood, there is a consensus that children’s right to home is essential in their development as it supports children’s emotional and social attachments, cognitive learning, and provides safety and shelter for healthy growth (Akesson et  al., 2016; Bulut, 2022). Home is a space that should ensure protection as well as mental and physical nutrition for a child. Consequently, different international bodies have addressed that children have the right to home for their development and in becoming active members of the community. As early as 1924, in the Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child,1 the discussion of the right to home for children was recognized as the foundation for children’s development (Erbay, 2013). In 1959 the United Nations adopted the Declaration of the Rights of the Child, principle 4 emphasized the right to home for each child: “The child shall enjoy the benefits of social security. He shall be entitled to grow and develop in health; to this end, special care and protection shall be provided both to him and to his mother, including adequate pre-natal and post-natal care. The child shall have the right to adequate nutrition, housing, recreation, and medical services.” (164). Some policies recognized the significance of having a home for a healthy child’s development well before extensive research identified its importance in children’s lives. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (Maslow & Lewis, 1987) was one of the prominent frameworks that articulated shelter as fundamental for children’s well-being and when it is threatened, it creates physical and cognitive dysfunction in their development. The significance of home is anchored in research and policies and was reiterated within Article 16 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC, 1989: 5): “No child shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his or her privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to unlawful attacks on his or her honor and reputation.” To better understand children’s right to home, it is important to understand that the CRC had three levels of children’s rights: protection, provision, and participation (Driskill, DeFalco et  al., 2010). The protection level focuses on the family and society to safeguard all necessary systems and policies to protect children physically and mentally from harm. The provision level determines the necessary elements (food, health care, education, etc.) for children’s growth. The participation level focuses on society and communities’ inclusion of children’s

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views in policy and decision making. The right to home can be seen as inherent within the protection and provision levels of the CRC as they solidify security and assistance for healthy physical and mental development. This right is sacred in the CRC as Akesson et al. (2016: 373) argue, it “…forbid(s) any arbitrary or unlawful interference with his or her home.” Furthermore, the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) articulated, “The right to live refers to the child’s need to protect their right to live and their physical and mental well-being. These include housing, nutrition, a quality standard of life, and benefiting from healthcare services” (Bulut, 2022, p. 128). Therefore, the right to home should not need to be a controversial issue for educators, policymakers, or the general public; on the contrary, it should be a right granted and protected to every child. Palestinian children are living in the shadow of the right to home, even though one of the CRC’s objectives is to increase the protection of such rights for children. Over the last 75 years, there has been a lack of enforcement of rights which has endangered Palestinian children’s safety, increased instances of complex trauma, and impaired healthy development. Palestinian children have witnessed and experienced the brutality of seeing their homes demolished and destroyed. Children have become refugees and have been denied the promise of home provided by the CRC. The criminalization of Palestinian’s right to home has been a transgenerational experience and has imprinted on the collective identity of children. Due to Israeli colonization and home demolition policies, Palestinian children have lost their sense of familial safety and are denied personal security. In turn, decades of displacement from their homes have inflicted complex generational trauma and negatively impacted Palestinian children’s mental and physical health (Shalhoub-Kevorkian, 2009). It is imperative to highlight the lack of adherence to the CRC since Palestinians’ right to home has been criminalized and deliberate home demolition policies have been used as a collective punishment (Meade, 2011). Hence, it is essential to understand how colonial strategies regarding home have impacted Palestinian children’s collective narrative of trauma in relation to early childhood education.

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The Historical Criminalization of the Right to Home for Children Colonization and subsequent legislation have criminalized the right to home for Palestinian children since the beginning of the twentieth century. To contextualize the unlawfulness of the right to home for Palestinian children, colonization should be observed as a continual manifestation in the geopolitical discourse employing different strategies to uproot families for decades. Palestinian children from various political eras have been uprooted from their homes and homeland by colonizing policies, drawing on security and imperialist discourses, that prohibited children from freely experiencing their homeland. The exercise of uprooting Palestine started after the First World War when Palestine along with Jordan, Iraq, and what is currently known as Saudi Arabia was placed under the control of the British Authority (Davis, 2010; Matthew, 2013; Norris, 2017; Shlaim, 2005). The colonial reason for such control was to prepare the local communities for national sovereignty (Khalidi, 2006; Matthew, 2013; Renton, 2010; Shlaim, 2005). This was not, however, the case for Palestine as the British Mandate served as a surrogate for the Zionist colonial project (Habashi, 2023). The Balfour Declaration (1917) stated that: His Majesty’s Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

This declaration was developed without the buy-in or consent of the Arab Palestinian majority, knowing that at that time the Jewish community was only 3% of the general population (Nadan, 2017). The Balfour Declaration was the basis for several plans to uproot the Palestinian indigenous people. During the British Mandate (1918–1948)2 there were several schemes to eradicate Palestinians’ homes in order to facilitate the establishment of European Jewish settlements without the consent of the majority (Habashi, 2023). One strategy was to increase land taxes through land registration, the implementation of which heavily impacted the livelihoods of the Arab Palestinian fellaheen (peasants). Many fellaheen did not have the funds to pay the inflated taxes on their lands. Therefore, most had to decrease their

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parcels of land, some fellaheen did not declare their holdings, and others registered them under landlords (Fischbach, 2000). The restructuring of the collective or “state” land was also a huge factor in increasing poverty among the Arab Palestinian population (Anderson, 2017, 2019). The economic situation was dire and led to some fellaheen selling their land due to debts (Anderson, 2017). This land registration scheme was largely facilitated by the Jewish National Fund (JNF) in order to purchase land regardless of its size. In particular, the JNF targeted absentee landowners who did not have any attachment to the land or its inhabitants outside of the monetary gains it provided (Wolfe, 2012). For example, one absentee landowner sold 240,000 dunams which resulted in the uprooting of 22 Arab Palestinian villages. These villages were replaced with 23 Jewish villages, almost one to one in a fertile land in Marj Ibn Amir known in English as the Jezreel Valley (Anderson, 2018; Falah, 1991; Fischbach, 2000; Frantzman & Kark, 2011; Kamel, 2014; Stein, 1987; Wolfe, 2012). Another scheme that facilitated an extensive uprooting during the British Mandate was the mandate authorities’ acquisition and claiming of “unclaimed” lands to become “state” land (Fischback, 2000 and Stein, 1987). Most of these lands were acquired from fellaheen farmers and many were later handed over to Jewish settlers (Fischbach, 2000). These schemes resulted in the uprooting of Palestinian homes and the displacement of Palestinian families and children while assuring the expansion of Jewish settlements (Stein, 2017). Throughout 1948, Zionist militias such as Etzel/Irgun, Lehi/Stern Gang, and Haganah (Jawad, 2007; Rui & Wenliang, 2020; Ozacky-Lazar & Kabha, 2002) forcefully expelled Palestinians including children from multiple villages across the land (Wolfe, 2012). The colonizing tactics utilized by these groups, not only terrorized the local Palestinian population, it furthered the overall goal of expansion of Jewish communities (Anderson, 2017; Anderson, 2019; Darweish & Sellick, 2017; Ozacky-Lazar & Kabha, 2002). The British Mandate’s imperial policies of changing demography, weaponization of the Jewish settlements and the brutal tactics of Zionist militia, worked together to displace and demolish hundreds of thousands of Palestinian homes and communities. This cemented the Zionist colonial project in Palestine. In 1948 the forceful displacement of two-thirds of the Arab Palestinian population from their homes is marked as Nakbha (catastrophe). The Zionist militia attacked Palestinian communities destroying around 531 villages and 11 urban neighborhoods (Meade, 2011). It then claimed almost 70% of the eradicated territories

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where they later established the Israeli state. There was no process or rights for Palestinian communities to claim back their homes (Manna’, 2013; Masalha, 2011; Ram, 2009; Sayigh, 2013; Sela, 2013). During the Nakbha, Palestinian families were forced to become refugees and live in tents in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt (Joronen & Griffiths, 2019). This systematic displacement of Palestinian children and their families was not the final scheme of denial of the right to home that resulted in the uprooting of thousands of children. On the contrary, it continued. Since the Six-Day War (Naksha) in 1967, Israel has occupied even more spaces of historic Palestine. For example, 35% of East Jerusalem was designated for Jewish settlements and 54% of the land was labeled “open green spaces” for future Jewish settlements (Meade, 2011, p. 81) and up to 40% of the West Bank was annexed (Tenenbaum, 2019). Furthermore, the war resulted in the Israeli military occupying the West Bank and Gaza Strip; thus, the children of 1967 who lost their homes experienced an uprooting similar to that of their grandparents (Joronen & Griffiths, 2019; Mason, 2007; Mead, 2011). The scheme of uprooting of Palestinian children and families from their homes continued under the banner of keeping the Israeli State secure (Meade, 2011) even after the Oslo Accords of 1993. This peace agreement was supposed to secure Palestinian children with the right to home. However, it divided the West Bank into three areas (A, B, and C). Area A is the responsibility of the Palestinian Authority, and Area B is the responsibility of both the Palestinian Authority and Israeli military. Area C is the responsibility of Israel and constitutes 60% of the West Bank territories. This effectively meant Palestinian communities living in specific Area C experienced violence, control, and surveillance in addition to the denial of the right to home. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) (2009: 10) reported that it is rare for building permits lodged by Palestinians in Area C to be accepted, in fact “… less than six percent of applications submitted between 2000 and 2007 were approved.” From 2000 to 2004 an average of five Palestinian permits were accepted each year, and from 2014 to 2016, 53 of 1253 applications were approved, over the same period of time 2000 demolition orders were issued (Handel, 2019). Meade (2011) identified that by 2009 approximately 24,000 homes were demolished in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem, and in the Palestinian communities in Israel. Moreover, 8.5% of the eradicated homes were destroyed as a form of

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collective punishment for terrorist attacks. The remaining 91.5% of Palestinian home demolition was due to the homeowner not obtaining the proper building permit. Since 1967, the Israel State has not issued simple building permits (including renovations and new homes) for thousands of Palestinian people creating the conditions to criminalize the Palestinian home with the threat of demolition (OCHA, 2009). A Palestinian building a home without a permit means that the home is subject to demolition as articulated in the national security apparatus. According to Handel (2019:1054), Palestinian unpermitted homes are subject to: …punitive demolitions by order of an army officer, often after a hearing and legal revision; and demolition as part of a combat-operational action, sometimes in the midst of battle and sometimes as part of a planned operation dubbed “exposure” in military jargon, referring to the opening of pathways for movement and observation and the removal of possible hiding places.

These strategies of home demolition and the uprooting of Palestinian children and families are still active to this day. Between 1967 and 2019 around 55,000 homes in the occupied territories of Palestine have been destroyed (Erakat, 2019). Criminalizing the right to home was rationalized by a range of Israeli security reasons and administrative responses. To further their colonization scheme, the Israeli government began construction of a separation wall around the Gaza Strip and through the West Bank under the guise of a need to increase security. The first wall was built around the Gaza Strip in the mid-nineties (AI, 2022). A second wall was then built around the West Bank and with it Palestinian communities lost homes and land. From 2009 to 2023, 9324 structures have been demolished in the West Bank displacing 13,444 Palestinians (OCHA, 2023). Some of these structures were destroyed to accommodate the construction of the apartheid wall. According to Oded Balility (2022), a reporter for the Associated Press (AP), over 80% of the unfinished barrier remains inside the West Bank effectively cutting off 10% of that territory. Additionally, the UN estimated 150 Palestinian communities are located west of the barrier and roughly 11,000 Palestinians populate the seam zone,3 thus requiring them to have Israeli housing permits in order to continue residing in their homes. Over two million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip have had their movements restricted due to an Israeli blockade. According to

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Amnesty International (AI) (2022), “It is near-impossible for Gazans to travel abroad or into the rest of the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), and they are effectively segregated from the rest of the world.” The existence of apartheid wall means that the Palestinian people including Palestine children are designated second-class citizens at best, and invisible at worst, further denying their right to home (AI, 2022). Another strategy to deliberately deny the right to home is through building Israeli settlements in Palestinian homes and land. There are more than 500,000 illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. With the support of the Israeli government, these entities have confiscated 88% of the land of the occupied territories. In addition, they evicted people from homes and neighborhoods in East Jerusalem and Hebron (STW, 2023). These settlements have created another layer of an apartheid state in which Palestinian children are denied the right to homes based on ethnicity. An example of the continuous criminalization of having a home for the Palestinian community of Rafah, a highly populated town and refugee camp located on the Egyptian border is provided by Gordon (2008: 37): During the first four years of the intifada the Israeli military demolished over 2500 Palestinian houses in the Gaza Strip … nearly two-thirds of these homes were in Rafah … 16 000 people—more than 10% of Rafah’s population—lost their homes, most of them refugees who were dispossessed for a second or third time.

The denial of home for Palestinian children is a reality that their grandparents, parents, and themselves endured whereby each generation experienced state-sanctioned trauma associated with the inception of the colonization project in Palestine. This intergenerational trauma impacts children’s development and its relation to the concept of home in early childhood.

Children’s Trauma and the Right to Home The concept of home for Palestinian children is ingrained in individual and collective trauma. It is associated with being denied the right of going back to home, living in refugee camps, and being criminalized for having a home to start with. The first trauma associated with denial of home occurred in the early twentieth century with British Mandate facilitating policies for Jewish National Funds to obtain Palestinian homes. Later, in

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1948 Palestinians experienced collective trauma with the forceful expulsion from their home and land (Masson & Smith, 2019). However, this did not inhibit children’s social identity connection to their grandparents’ homes as they viewed them as their own (Chatty, 2009). Family narratives described these spaces as providing safety and protection prior to colonization which corresponds with the protection and provision levels articulated in elements of the CRC. In a way, the collective trauma of displacement did not dismiss children’s aspiration for the right to home. Second- and third-generation Palestinian refugee children still identify home as their ancestral villages where their grandparents lived. Habashi (2008) found children in refugee camps identify themselves in relation to places prior to Nakbha of 1948. Palestinian children’s narratives associated with the home prior to Zionist colonization are perceived by these generations as safe places that provided the necessary development for children’s growth. The Israeli military occupation and the perpetual lack of individual security and community protection keep Palestinian children in a state of hyper-awareness regarding the legacy of displacement as Israeli colonization continues. This often leads to them yearning for the experiences of their grandparents prior to colonization. Through recalling the narrative of their grandparents and even great-grandparents, young Palestinians feel a deep connection to their roots. Children living as refugees know the names of their home villages and neighbors. Grandparents make sure that the young generation knows the stories of when they had the right to a home. Palestinian children living in the shadow of their collective memory is one form of coping with the trauma induced by the criminalization of the right to home as it is rendered in their individual narratives and national identity (Habashi, 2008). The expulsion from their homeland, and with it the loss of their homes, creates the foundation of Palestinian collective memories and national identity (Habashi, 2013). Children’s national identity also includes multiple collective and familial traumas thus furthering the denial of all Palestinians’ right to home. The challenge of criminalization of the right to home is rooted not only historically, but in the current Palestinian social-political realities of the larger community. Every generation is fighting to reclaim and keep their home. This is no different now as children are still experiencing home demolition, land confiscation, and apartheid policies. The right to home for Palestinian children cannot be discussed in isolation from collective trauma and its impact on their development. The historical and contemporary structural violence of

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colonization has created a multilayered and multidimensional transgenerational trauma (Qouta et al., 2008). The legacy of colonization has severely destroyed the fabric of nations for generations, creating additional struggles for post-colonial nations to heal from injustice and structural oppression. As is the case with the nation of South Africa and their call for a path to healing (Masson & Smith, 2019). The struggle to heal from trauma is not a process a nation can undertake without intentionality, especially if oppressive conditions are still in place and children are experiencing their effects every day. Palestinian children are not sheltered from the oppressive geopolitical reality; on the contrary, they often suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (Qouta et al., 2008). Furthermore, trauma can be transmitted from one generation to another, especially if the structure of colonization and apartheid is present and children are fearful of losing their homes. Human rights organizations such as B’Tselem4 have voiced several concerns about the severity of the political condition including home demolition and Israeli settlement expansion strategies and how they impact children’s psycho-social development and their ability to cope with traumatic events. Palestinian children are not only carrying the collective trauma of their ancestors, but they are also adding an individual chapter that will further impact themselves and their communities. Trauma has impacted generations of Palestinians manifested in their ability to experience and imagine different concepts of the right to home contrary to the colonial reality. Being denied the right to home for generations has led many Palestinians to develop complex trauma even altering their genetics. Children who experience the effects of transgenerational trauma display similar traumatic symptoms as their parents. According to Fortuna et  al. (2022: 240), “research on Rwandan genocide survivors found epigenetic modifications of the glucocorticoid receptor in women exposed to genocide during pregnancy and their children who were exposed in utero.” Though there is no current research on Palestinian mothers and children, it would not be surprising if they had similar diagnoses. Children with complex post-traumatic stress disorder have an increased vulnerability to experiencing the negative impacts of stressful life events, which are never-ending. Transgenerational trauma induced by denying the right to home has been recognized by the oppressor, the Israeli government. Uri Avnery, a former member of the Israeli Knesset stated, “… the intention behind house demolitions is to carry out a transfer, known by

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the rest of the world as ‘ethnic cleansing’ so that the territory can be acquired by Israel free of any Arab people” (Meade, 2011: 81). The denial of the right to home and the transgenerational trauma does not distinguish between Palestinian adults and children. Intentionally inflicted trauma experienced by each generation without any time to heal, shows the Israeli government’s psychological warfare on children and the community. This violation of the denial of the right to home induces psychological distress creating a severe mental health crisis for Palestinian children. Two examples of the effects of multiple home demolitions are in Um Al-Khair, a Bedouin village with a population of approximately 110 Arab Palestinians and Al-Walaja. According to Joronen and Griffiths (2019: 568), Um-Khair has seen: … 25 demolitions that have taken the homes of 154 people. In 2014 alone, the community was subject to 8 visits by IDF bulldozers that demolished 10 structures (2 community structures, 8 dwellings), displacing a total of 48 people, while 2016 saw 13 further residential structures razed and 66 people displaced.

In the village of Al-Walaja: … 30 years, Israel has ordered approximately 150 demolition orders in the village … Of the 150 demolition orders that have been issued, 90 are still pending to the effect that more than half of families … live under the threat of home demolition.

Children’s personal trauma is interwoven with the national discourse which has suffered and continues to suffer from collective trauma going back generations. The continuing oppressive living conditions of the Palestinian people only reinforces the collective trauma whereby children become the authors of its new chapter (Habashi, 2013). Shalhoub-­ Kevorkian (2009) argues that transgenerational trauma is woven into children’s experiences, especially in home demolition where the concept of safety, family, and community security is no longer assured. The manifestation of displacement trauma is experienced at all ages, as Shalhoub-­ Kervorkian shares (2009, p. 331): “… my 4-year-old sister used to go to bed at nine o’clock in the evening. Nowadays she stays awake until one o’clock in the morning because she is afraid of the shelling. She thinks our house will be destroyed and she will get killed.” Structural correction is

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essential for Palestinian children to heal from trauma and gain the right to home. This continues to be denied and Palestinian communities of refugees, diaspora or otherwise, are yearning to have a space of safety that they can call home.

Conclusion Palestinian children, as with all children, were born with the right to home, yet this has been denied to them for decades due to colonization. Palestinians’ right to home has been criminalized resulting in complex trauma for generations while children bear witness to the continuous destruction of their homes, families, and communities. The historical denial of the right to home in the Palestinian case poses practical and pedagogical challenges for early childhood (EC) education. Early childhood educators have to consider the generational and current trauma of the denial of the right to home and its inherent effect on the emotional and academic development of children. Children’s trauma shapes the values associated with the home such as safety, community, identity, and others. These values were not challenges for the generation prior to the Zionist colonization and are referenced and highlighted in intergenerational narratives. The paradox is that these narratives are equal in proximity to Palestinian children’s community discourses as their contentious lived experiences. This contrary reality of the right to home raises several questions for EC educators such as: Is there an alternative to the right to home and are there substitutes for its associated values? Can grandparents’ narratives be included in classroom learning to present the possibility of safety? Can inclusion of these narratives in early childhood bridge the gap of what it means to have the right to home? Can educators treat these narratives as equal to other children’s stories that aim to achieve particular learning or imagination? Early childhood educators can provide possible responses and strategies to ensure children’s safety and learning. Classroom settings can mimic the associated values of home and integrate the intergenerational narratives, yet it is vital to consider the interconnectedness of children’s well-being within the larger community. This is important since the community discourse is not isolated from the EC spaces that aims to provide a safe environment for children. For this reason, EC educators should consider how the community is addressing the concept of the right to home as adults are suffering for generations from the same denial of the right to home as

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children. A compartmentalized EC classroom that does not address the right to home in the community exacerbates the denial of home. To create a sense of safety in the classroom regardless of the outside community being denied the right of home only further marginalizes children’s trauma and narrative. Therefore, EC should look into how the Palestinian community addressed the denial of such a right. Fighting for the right to home has been part of the community discourse that kept this right alive even though it was introspected by colonization. For decades Palestinians have fought for and insisted that they have the right to a home and by doing so they are not accepting the colonization status quo, regardless of the power imbalances at play. Early childhood educators can identify the values of community commitment to the fight for the right to home by preserving the intergenerational narratives (pre- and post-colonization)—being vigilant that these narratives are not destroyed, demolished, or disappeared— thus fostering children’s sense of being.

Notes 1. This right was developed from a Western perspective. Although it emphasizes the rights for all children globally; it was implemented inconsistently, especially, in countries most affected by colonization. 2. Although the commonly reported dates for the British Mandate in Palestine are 1918–1948. We utilize the dates 1917–1948 due to the repercussions of the Balfour Declaration stripping away the rights of the Palestinian people. 3. The UN defines seam zones as sections of Palestinian land severed from the OPT and designated by Israel as closed military areas. Access to these areas is controlled by the Israeli Defense Force via a permit system thus regulating and limiting Palestinian access. 4. B’Tselem is the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories; they publish position papers, and reports on human rights violations committed by Israel in the Occupied Territories since 1989.

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Home Is There: Borderlands, Belonging, and the Stories We Tell Angeles Maldonado and Beth Blue Swadener

“Home is here, home is here, home is here…!” chanted a group of “dacamented” and undocumented youth outside the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans on July 6, 2022.

What does it mean to call a place home? At the time of this writing there are now over 100 million refugees and asylum seekers in the world. Mobility is thus a pervasive feature of contemporary childhoods. Immigrant families and youth in the United States exist in a precarious zone of indistinction, in an imaginary space, sin tierra en cuál sembrar nuestras raices. This is what living in the borderlands feels like. It is like living in a house without a foundation. Confined by shifting walls and borders, immigrant

A. Maldonado (*) The Institute for Border Crit Theory, Phoenix, AZ, USA e-mail: [email protected] B. B. Swadener Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Gibbons et al. (eds.), Home in Early Childhood Care and Education, Critical Cultural Studies of Childhood, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43695-6_6

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families exist and live in a mythological land of the here and there. Como dice la India Maria, somos ni de aqui ni de alla. This contested space on Indigenous land is home. It is a wavering zone with moving borders that has been intentionally constructed and fabricated to make the “other” feel less human. In this chapter we discuss the ways in which immigrant youth and their families experience, re-imagine, and construct home. We begin the chapter by problematizing borders, nationalism, and fixed notions of belonging. Our writing incorporates Border Crit and Nomadic theory to unpack the precarities of legal status and fixed figurations of identity amidst the contradiction of an expanding global and free world. We analyze ways in which immigrant families experience and create home in the United States and explore the social conditions that immigrant families and their children navigate, including legal status, discrimination, criminalization, immigration enforcement and deportation as an ever-present threat, intergenerational trauma, and mixed-status family realities. We find hope and inspiration in the innovative and resilient ways in which immigrant families and their nomadic spirits move through, past and in spite of violent systems of oppression to construct and connect to the homeland by sharing language, stories, resources, space, and culture. Families across the United States are building new transborder communities, and plugging into or creating economic markets through their labor and/or creation of new businesses. As scholar activists we affirmatively advocate for the abolition of all borders and the affirmation and recognition of already existing fluid, transformative and always becoming communities. To aspire towards an inclusive space of belonging is perhaps naive, but one worth intentionally visiting if at minimum through our imagination and consciousness. May we allow ourselves to mentally cross there. It is through this mental migration that we may begin the work of deconditioning our thinking of home.

Stories for Human Rights In the spirit of critical race theory, Border Crit theory reminds us of the power of narrative and counter-narratives in shedding light on issues of social justice. This chapter therefore leans into our own stories, experiences, and values as human rights scholar activists focused on childhoods. We write from the experience of being a young immigrant child who struggled to belong and feel at home in a new and often unwelcoming space; we also draw from interviews with young children in immigrant and

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or mixed-status families. Families who live day to day, some of whom have experienced the deportation of a parent and/or with the looming fear of losing a family member because of their legal status. We also write from the perspective of the second author’s experience as a settler colonial white co-conspirator, interrogating the contested dynamics of home and the human cost of colonial home making, and reflecting on her experiences with street children and nomadic communities in Kenya. Our writing denounces academic neutrality and rationality and instead is anchored in solidarity with marginalized communities on issues that continue to impact and threaten the sense of safety and well-being of immigrant children. We present an invitation to the reader to co-construct and travel with us to a home that is entirely possible and can welcome us all. The US/Mexico border has evolved not only into a physical barrier but is manifesting itself as a site of conflict and contention through a myriad of anti-immigrant policies that extend beyond the border and reflect a national culture that serves to sanction systemic racism and xenophobia (Maldonado & Swadener, 2021). The types of immigration enforcement that are being enacted here disrupt childhoods and families and continue to result in extensive and reprehensible human rights violations. We apply Border Crit theory (Maldonado, 2013) and Border Crit methodologies (Maldonado et al., 2019), to contextualize border policies and foreground counter-narratives that highlight how different constructions of home are in play in the lives of immigrant children and families. Border Crit Theory (Maldonado, 2013) is inspired by Critical Race Theory (CRT), Tribal Critical Race Theory (Tribal Crit), and Latino/a Critical Race Theory (Lat Crit). Border Crit (Maldonado, 2013; Maldonado et al., 2020) recognizes the intersection of race and borders as endemic to everyday life and society and foregrounds the experiences and intersectionality of people of color living in the borderlands. Our work is grounded in a critique of government-sanctioned forms of violence against migrant (often Indigenous) children and families in the United States and beyond. Our writing and what and how we research is inspired by our own participation in grassroots struggle and advocacy within the immigrant rights movement and in advocating for children’s rights on an international scale. Belonging or living—and struggling to be at home—in the borderlands entails living in a space that is not only physical (and marked by a proximity to an actual national and geographical border) but also applies to those whose connection to the border (and intense awareness of the border and related laws and institutions) has

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power over their lived reality and status. We argue that intensified anti-­ immigrant rhetoric in contemporary US politics serves to fuel this hyper awareness and otherizing of the migrant identity formation and consciousness. Border Crit maintains that colonization impacts migrant and border communities and complicates the ways in which the symbolic border and related enforcement policies manifest materially and extend into the interior to control and influence identity formation and belonging. As Anzaldua (1987) described: “The U.S-Mexican border es una herida abierta where the Third World grates against the first and bleeds. And before a scab forms it hemorrhages again, the lifeblood of two worlds merging to form a third country—a border culture” (25). This ongoing and continuous intentional process of shifting borders, or political “borderizing” of a space or community, helps legitimize the violation of human rights of those it targets and excludes. Purnell (2021) observes: Cities and the federal government have long used law enforcement and the military for border control. During the 1800s Indigenous peoples and Mexicans fought militiamen, the Army, vigilantes, and rangers who helped colonize the same land where, a century later, Kris Kobach [author of laws like SB 1070 in Arizona] planned to expand police for immigration control. A primary reason Mexicans were “immigrants” in the first place is because the U.S. transitioned from a settler colony under Britain to a nation state with borders. Until then, the land had been Mexico, and before that, inhabited by various Native peoples who roamed the land without notions of ‘legal’ or ‘illegal.’ (27)

Tenets of Border Crit theory demand that we look beyond this spectacle of immigration enforcement to unveil the ideologies behind these policies and bring forth a connection to its historical roots. Like CRT, Border Crit denounces the neutrality of law and government and seeks to unveil its contradictions through counter stories and demands a reimagining of a world without borders. “The concepts of land, property, migration, citizenship, identity, culture, community, knowledge, education, and power take on new meaning when examined through a borderless lens” (Maldonado, 2013: 25). Border Crit methodologies involve the use of narratives and stories as necessary sources of knowledge that hold the power to complicate the often-simplified rationalization of injustice (Solorzano & Yosso, 2002). In

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bringing forth the experiences and nuanced realities of migrant and indigenous people, Border Crit methodologies and writing confront and denounce white supremacy and assimilation and redefine the problem of migration to be a problem of imperialism, and an incessant desire for political and economic gain. Migrant communities worldwide believe in (and act upon) their fundamental right to cross borders or the right to human mobility (Ybarra Maldonado, 2007, 2013; Maldonado, 2013). Finally, Border Crit Theory is grounded in direct action and calls for researchers to be accountable to communities one seeks to represent, by raising ethical questions about the goals of the research, including how the research itself will benefit communities. It urges us to reflect upon who is benefiting from the stories we tell, and the projects we undertake in research to ensure that at the heart of our writing are the voices and perspectives of people of color. An important goal is for our research to remain connected to social justice movement demands in solidarity with local impacted communities on both sides of the border: “Doing research towards a Borderless Critical Place demands a direct action, activist, and ally component to research. It requires a systematic commitment to social justice, and human rights for people residing on both sides of the border” (Maldonado, 2013: 321). We believe these methodologies are useful tools for better understanding notions of home for immigrant children. Our analysis and conclusions stem from direct observation, participatory action research, auto and visual ethnography, counter-narratives, personal testimonies, community consultations, and qualitative conversational and activity-involved multi-­ generational interviews. We build and reflect upon prior research we conducted (Maldonado et al., 2019), documenting the views and perspectives of immigrant children living in Arizona, including those in undocumented families. As scholar activists living and working in the US Southwest Borderlands, actively advocating for immigrant rights, women’s rights, and Black liberation movements, our work is intersectional and inspired by principles of social justice, abolition, and human rights. In the US after 2022, there is an unprecedented assault on women embodied in the recent Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v Wade. We see this as yet another assault from the same violent system, a system that by design has remained committed to dehumanizing and disempowering anyone who is not a white cis male. As Border Crit scholars who believe that all borders must be dismantled and resisted, we observe and interrogate the ways in which

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borders rely on the fabrication of lesser human identities to continue to strip the other of basic human rights.

Immigrant Families in the Borderlands We argue that children’s views and voices regarding issues that directly affect their lives must be valued. We maintain an emphasis on immigrant children and families and ways that home is understood, threatened, and enacted. We illustrate the challenges faced including the precarity of being undocumented and problematize why certain home realities are marginalized, neglected, unrecognized, or silenced. Angeles Maldonado reflects: Once upon a time, I too was “an illegal,” an “immigrant,” a “criminal,” an “alien other.” Today, I “belong.” However, this sense of belonging doesn’t quite feel genuine. For some of us, our migration journey never leaves us. It flows within us and is ingrained into our sense of self, taking space in every aspect of our lives and in our cells. Sometimes I think we have built a home within each other. I look around those who remind me of where I have been, and in their fears and in their hopes I see myself, a part of me that lingers in these spaces of the in between. You see it’s not by accident that we feel as half subjects. There is an entire system designed to make one think that our legal status matters; that without this permission we are less valid humans. And while a part of me understands that this is false, there is a spiritual part of me that in moments feels defeated. For many years now, I have been deeply involved in the immigrant rights movement. Living in the borderlands, I have personally and directly witnessed the traumatic impact of our horrendous immigration laws on children and their families. Through our legal work and activism, my husband and I have encountered so many stories; stories of resilience and resistance, but stories of struggle nonetheless. I think about the many ways in which borders permeate not just the geographical landscapes of countries but in the ways these shifting borders continue to claim yet more territory. In this realm of contested space as a reality, we build and cultivate homes; spaces uniquely ours and increasingly less tangible and real. Our homes, like our movement, flow through the relationships and connections we make in community and with the land. These are our stories and through them and through our language we preserve the ‘homeland’ and our place within it.

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As Anzaldua (1987) explains: Borders are set up to define the places that are safe and unsafe, to distinguish us from them. A border is a dividing line, a narrow strip along a steep edge. A borderland is a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary. It is in a constant state of transition. The prohibited and forbidden are its inhabitants. (25)

It is these inhabitants’ experiences that we wish to turn our focus to. Immigrant families exist and belong to this social state of liminality. In this uncertain terrain they work, establish homes, and raise their children. The homeland therefore becomes a non-physical and ever flowing space that connects two worlds and creates a third. Home is in essence built out of necessity in spite of a political landscape that criminalizes migration via laws, policies, and aggressive local and federal enforcement efforts. Immigration status plays a major role in a child’s identity formation. Immigrant children, even those not living near a border, carry with them this transborder sense of identity as they navigate their daily lives and illustrate an understanding significantly influenced by their transborder connection and disconnection to their family’s country of origin. We find, as discussed earlier, that because of the deeply political environment in which immigrant children reside, many immigrant children are increasingly aware of their status and sense of belonging to multiple cultures and countries. Every year politicians and media outlets appease nativist and misogynistic ideologies with symbolic images, metaphors, and rhetoric to create the illusion that the United States is under attack. Edelman (1967) described that “political condensation symbols,” are often applied to construct a “political spectacle,” and that these symbols “evoke the emotions associated with the situation. They condense into one symbolic event, sign, or act patriotic pride, anxieties, remembrances of past glories or humiliations, promises of future greatness: some one of these or all of them” (6). These discourses serve to justify law, policies, and practices that violate the human rights of scapegoated communities. Edelman (1988) then elaborates upon the ways in which leadership is constructed through the fabrication of social problems and their perceived origin. Leaders become symbols and signifiers of good and evil and speak to the social anxieties of the public. Politicians use symbolic symbols and metaphors that reinforce dominant ideologies and influence spectators into action or “placate” their

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sentiments into compliance creating political spectacles that advance their political gain, interests, or ambitions (40). Johnson (1997) argues the construction of the term alien is a strategy that makes the denial of rights to those under that label more acceptable and even expected: “the concept of the alien … helps to reinforce and strengthen nativist sentiment toward members of new immigrant groups, which in turn influences U.S. responses to immigration and human rights issues” (265). These labels attempt to dehumanize the immigrant identity. Brown and black captive bodies in handcuffs are paraded around in the news, to illustrate an illusion of government power and control. Border Crit Theory demands that we look at the ways in which race plays a role in these social constructions and to look at the historical context of these constructions. Since the early development of immigration law, the classification of people as aliens, as opposed to citizens, has had and continues to have significant legal, social, racial, and political ramifications. Cunningham-Parmeter (2011) illustrates that “Law is told through stories, and stories are told through metaphors” (1559). Therefore, the metaphors applied in the stories we tell about immigrant families are inviting us to participate in either the legitimization of laws that dehumanize them or protect them. From the beginning, discourse in immigration law has referred to immigrants as aliens, describing migration with vivid negatively connotated terms such as invasion, floods, masses, waste, infection, or as a disease. An underlying metaphor conveyed by the United States government is that its national body is being infected or polluted or invaded or attacked by immigrants. We see this in cases such as INS v. Lopez-­ Mendoza (1984) where the Supreme Court addressed whether deportation hearings were subject to the same rules for evidence afforded to criminal cases (Cunningham-Parmeter, 2011). In this case immigrants were presented as poisonous toxic waste to be removed, i.e., deported from the national body. Analyzing these metaphors is helpful in deconstructing the ideologies behind contemporary immigration law. We hyper-focus on the term alien in this discussion because we see it as a critical component in understanding how immigrants came to be otherized and criminalized. Cunningham-­ Parmeter’s (2011) powerful deconstruction illustrates that historically, and embedded within immigration law, the term has not only signified otherness, criminality, ethnicity, and race but it has also informed legal practices, restrictions, and protections; “Under the Naturalization Act of 1790 only ‘free white person(s) could naturalize…and the Alien and

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Sedition Acts of 1798 allowed the president to remove aliens’ judge[d] dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States” (1570). Because aliens were described as hostile threats; early legislatures enacted laws in the name of protecting public safety. Finally, Cunningham-Parmeter (2011) illustrates the racial focus of the term in itself: “In contemporary legal discourse, references to ‘illegal aliens’ facilitate a coded discussion on immigration that—rather than involving immigrants in general—focuses on Mexicans in particular, much like the explicitly racist language of the past, today’s illegal alien remains a highly racialized figure” (1577). Brown and Black captive bodies in handcuffs are paraded around in the news, faceless, nameless criminalized bodies gathered in mass and in public to illustrate an illusion of government power and control. This political spectacle serves to link race with criminality and to fabricate for clueless spectators the expectation of social control and enforcement. At the time of this writing, far Right candidates in Arizona are portraying an invasion at the border and framing it in images from no trespassing signs to advocating still greater militarization of the border. The transborder region, in sum, becomes a space of resistance to inequality, generating “border life” as necessarily innovative, mixed with opportunities and creativity amidst tragedy and inequality (Velez-Ibanez & Heyman, 2017). We exist in the ever-expanding contradiction of a global commodified economy with the very disturbing reality of fixed and violent borders. The illusion of a free world, with flowing capital while an ongoing commitment to fear-based and race-based restriction, suspicion, and control of human mobility. While immigration could simply mean movement, it has become a political condensation symbol. Nationalism and all that it entails becomes the ideological vehicle with which we justify the reiteration of borders that are not only wounds on the land but become inscribed in the bodies of those it attempts to exclude. We turn to Nomadic Theory (Braidotti, 2012) to illustrate that profit-oriented nomadism through advanced liberal economics engender transnational flows of migration and a precarious workforce: global ideology of allegedly free mobility coexists alongside frozen borders and increasing discrimination and exclusion of multiple “disposable” others … the deterritorializations induced by the hypermobility of capitalism and the forms of migration and human mobility they entail, instead of challenging the hegemony of nation states, strengthen their hold not only over territory and social space but also over identity and cultural memory. (18)

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Braidotti (2012) describes the importance of disrupting the ways in which we think about identity representations and understand them as processes and social locations in and of themselves. Immigration status becomes not just a category but a defining figuration in the identity development of immigrant children. She explains that figurations “draw a cartography of the power relations that define these respective positions” (14). When we view the immigrant identity as unfixed and always in the process of becoming, it enables the reader to recognize its mobility. This differentiation in our understanding of the precarity of legality is helpful because it allows us to “identify possible sites and strategies of resistance” that exist in this fabrication and the intentional location it maintains within society (14). Having legal documents or not, being an immigrant or not, are not categories but “highly specific geopolitical locations—it’s history tattooed on your body” (14). Thinking about processes, interconnections, and flows rather than concepts is a difficult endeavor because it has been ingrained upon us to think in terms of linearity and objectivity. When identity is fixed it enables the possibility of control, therefore this ingraining serves to help maintain the status quo. Alternatively, subjectivity requires effort, complexity, and contextualization. Nomadic theory views representations as flows, and considers not only A and B, but is specifically interested in understanding the power dynamics between A and B and all that happens in between space and contestation of land, power, and belonging. Immigrant families often struggle with discrimination, poverty, and government sanctioned criminalization and violence. Poverty is a major factor in family members’ decision to face the multiple risks of border crossing and asylum-seeking. Central American immigrants have long faced extreme poverty and now face increasing violence, including gender-­ based violence and loss of family members to gang violence and crime. According to Bermeo’s article in the Washington Post (2019): Individuals and families flee El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras because these countries—and cities within these countries—rank among the world’s most violent. In addition, years of drought and crop failure have caused extreme food insecurity, forcing rural residents to abandon their homelands.

During the Trump years, a first secret and then increasingly visible policy of family separation, and “zero tolerance” for immigrants traumatized countless children and parents, who continue to suffer. In an in-depth investigation, Dickerson (2022) claimed “The secret history of the US

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government’s family-separation policy: ‘We need to take away children,’” makes visible, an unprecedented and brutal separation of children as young as infants and toddlers were ripped from their parents’ arms, with parents sent back to countries of origin and children taken into custody by the US and warehoused in temporary detention facilities, with many being placed in foster care. As Dickerson (2022) states: Trump-administration officials insisted for a whole year that family separations weren’t happening. Finally, in the spring of 2018, they announced the implementation of a separation policy with great fanfare—as if one had not already been underway for months. Then they declared that separating families was not the goal of the policy, but an unfortunate result of prosecuting parents who crossed the border illegally with their children. Yet a mountain of evidence shows that this is explicitly false: Separating children was not just a side effect, but the intent. Instead of working to reunify families after parents were prosecuted, officials worked to keep them apart for longer. (para 14)

Once in the US, living undocumented often means continuing to live in high poverty in areas facing racial profiling, subjected to over-policing, working low wage and often hazardous jobs, and sending children to or attending underfunded schools. Many migrant communities work in the shadows and do not have health insurance nor seek public assistance (Toomey et  al., 2014). Recent immigration policies have decreased the public benefits that even long-term, tax-paying migrant families can access. Migrant families, as many other marginalized groups, often fear calling the police as police encounters may result in death or deportation. Police, in many states, are known to actively collaborate with immigration authorities. This mistrust may also lead families to restrict their interactions with community and governmental agencies. Children (ages 4–9  years) in our studies discussed several concerns regarding the safety of themselves and their families, including fear of losing a parent because of their status, living in isolation, not being allowed to play outside due to traffic or for fear of violence, including being shot. Immigrant children are often hyper aware of their immigrant status and their family’s legal vulnerability and stability. In particular, children who have had a parent detained have expressed fear and concern for their family’s safety. These discussions included ways they stayed safe at home and alternatives to playing outside. One child, for example, shared that because

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of space limitations and safety concerns with being outdoors they would play hide and seek using a cup. Instead of hiding themselves, they would hide the cup inside the house. They also shared helping younger siblings. These discussions implicitly reflected the precarity of home and yet the view that family and the stories, language, and connections they share are also what makes a home. In 2020, under former president Trump, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) conducted one of the largest immigration raids—in US history. On August 7, 2019, 680 families were abducted in large-scale worksite raids throughout Mississippi. Helicopters and ICE agents landed in seven chicken processing plants, taking people and incarcerating them for the crime of working without documents. Included in these attacks were the mothers of children like Daniela, who described in detail her sense of hopelessness, and feeling as if people and more specifically, teachers in her school did not know or did not care, because no one seemed to be discussing what had happened to her or even inquiring whether she was okay. Children in the study shared that although many other children were in similar circumstances, there was a general avoidance to talk about what happened in Mississippi among their peers and the adults in their lives. The following conversation with Daniela illustrates feelings of invisibility and school-related fears. Her response is one we have heard before through our work, activism, and research, when speaking with children whose parents are taken and detained: Interviewer: And are you okay? Daniela: Yeah. Interviewer: Yeah. What do you think about what happened? Daniela: This sickness, when I get ready for school, my head hurts and my stomach hurts for my mom and then when I go to school, I can’t work ’cause I don’t have my mom. With heightened global violence and injustice occurring for border-­ crossing children and families who identify as refugees, asylum seekers, and immigrants, there is an urgent need to understand the perspectives and life experiences of young migrant children and address their needs for trauma-informed care and culturally relevant educational experiences. As Wood (2018) concludes, “separation of vulnerable children from their parents … creates a perfect storm for attachment damage, toxic stress and trauma. Children in immigration detention remain at significantly

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increased risk of physical, mental, emotional and relationship disorders in the short and long term” (5).

Building and Creating Home How is it that immigrant parents instill a sense of safety and protection for their children in spite of the many external forces in place that negate their very belonging? How do children learn to feel like they are home? In what ways do they feel like they belong? What role does language and code switching play in their ability to navigate the internal and external aspects of their home life? Why are fixed notions of home problematic? How are some home realities silenced and or negated? Earlier in this chapter, we problematized fixed understandings of immigrant identity. We contextualized the importance of applying a theoretical framework of the borderlands, deconstructed discourse around migration, and introduced the usefulness of applying nomadic theory to further understand the ways in which the immigrant identity is shaped by the boundaries it inhabits or transgresses but at the same time the ways in which the character of this identity itself is transformed and transforms its geographic, social, cultural, and economic environments. In this section, we present ways in which immigrant children and their families co-­ construct home in this contested socio-political landscape. We affirm that immigrant families innovate and create home through parenting and mothering practices, storytelling, language, code switching, civic participation, connecting within their communities, and through their labor and ways of participating (often under the radar) within the economy. We observe and argue that creating a transborder sense of belonging is necessary and intentional for survival or simply to convey or gain trust within the communities in which immigrant families live. bell hooks (1990, 1997) discusses the  important responsibility that Black women took on in creating a homeplace: it has been primarily the responsibility of black women to construct domestic households as spaces of care and nurturance in the face of the brutal harsh reality of racist oppression, of sexist domination. Historically, African-­ American people believed that the construction of a homeplace, however fragile and tenuous (the slave hut, the wooden shack) had a radical political dimension.  Despite the brutal reality of racial apartheid, of domination, one’s homeplace was the one site where one could freely confront the issue

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of humanization, where one could resist. Black women resisted by making homes where all Black people could strive to be subjects, not objects, where we could be affirmed in our minds and hearts despite poverty, hardship, and deprivation, where we could restore to ourselves the dignity denied us on the outside in the public world. They understood intellectually and intuitively the meaning of homeplace in the midst of an oppressive and dominating social reality, of homeplace as a site of resistance and liberation struggle. (hooks, 1990: 42–45)

We see the issues faced by Latina and other immigrant and asylum-seeking mothers as similar to hooks’ framing of home as a site of resistance as well as safety and connection to family in the larger diaspora. This safety is threatened in unique ways as such families are targets of arrest and deportation, but an array of practices that reflect the need to create and connect home to larger community and community struggles.

Transborder Homes and Storytelling As a child I recall always hearing about the other side, the other side, and when we came to live here, it was always stories about what we would do when we went back. Stories are indeed powerful tools families use to create a sense of home for their children. The language used in these stories also illustrates to the children that place that is uniquely theirs. When sharing with my nephews stories of my childhood, they sometimes say “ohh i heard this one…” In a way what makes us family is this thread we share, the stories are the thread and we relate to these creations, and these relations also shape our identity. – Angeles Maldonado. In prior research with immigrant mothers, we observed the ways in which immigrant families intersect with the land through their mothering practices, and by creating space for remembering cross-border stories, rituals, objects, and symbols that signify and communicate what home is. From birthing practices and decisions made about how and where a child is born and what they are to be named to the language used, discourse enacted, music played, foods fed and/or the places that are frequented or inhabited, these are all shared experiences that enable immigrant families to create a sense of being home or of belonging. Notions of home are thus often communicated through these everyday shared practices and cultural rituals, ideologies, remembrances, and recognitions of their immigration journey and experience of living without

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status or in a mixed status family. The social location of their legal status and the geographic space in which they live, in itself carries with it a set of shared challenges but it is in the ways in which they navigate this nonspace space that intersects the culture they inhabit to create transborder homes, with new ways of becoming. Building on O’Brien and Swadener (2006), we recognize the power of counter-narratives to patriarchal framings of family in affirming the power of mothers in shaping cultural transformation. In conversations with immigrant and activist mothers we observe the ways in which they understand themselves as agents of cultural reproduction with a special interest on their experiences while away from their countries of birth; the tools they use to create national narratives; how mothers navigate the need to integrate their children into their new home, while maintaining bonds to the land they have left; how mothers embody the gendered creation of the state; and how activism, class, gender, race, sexual identity, and immigration status inform mothering practices and are negotiated by mothers. Conversations with migrant mothers reveal a desire to provide their children with an environment that is or was different from the one that seeded their immigration journey. We adopt the concept of act of citizenship advocated by Isin (2007, 2009, 2017) and in Cheng (2021) to describe what immigrant mothers in the borderlands do to create notions of home and belonging. We locate such transborder identities in larger perspectives on children’s identity development, which has been described as a socially constructed process (McEwen, 2003), including one in which demographic characteristics provided by a social context inform one’s sense of self, sense of being, and sense of interaction with others (Erikson, 1959). When we asked children where they were from, they would name both the US and the country where their parents were born. We witnessed this in our interviews with immigrant children (Maldonado et al., 2020). In this study, we asked children living in Arizona about their perspectives on home, school, and community. One eight-year-old boy reflected, while telling us about his cousins, “I think we all come from Mexico, but we were born here… so we are Mexican slash American” (Maldonado et al., 2020: 7). Several children we talked with expressed a yearning to see grandparents, in ways we came to describe as cross-border imaginaries, including imagining what visits to their relatives’ homes in Mexico or other places might be like. In another study, interviewing children in the era of Trump, we spoke with Jerri (age 11), a child living in Mississippi, whose family experienced

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one of the largest workplace immigration raids in the US, with a net of 680 arrests (Solis, 2019). In an earlier study (Maldonado & Swadener, 2021), Jerri reflected about his country of origin: Interviewer: Jerri: Interviewer: Jerri: Interviewer: Jerri:

Where are you from? United States. United States? and Guatemala. Okay, and Guatemala, okay. And what do you know about Guatemala? I know that many kids just want to eat but when they don’t have any food they just go sneak for food and I’m so sad for them too.

This transborder imaginary also reflected assumptions about home. Several children mentioned visiting grandparents and cousins in Mexico and then clarified that they hadn’t seen relatives there, except on phone chats—in many years—if ever. Such imaginaries of home as a place of extended family, familiar customs, language, and love serve to support children’s notions of belonging. We argue these yearnings are often transmitted via storytelling. Mothering and parenting practices create connections to their natal home, roots, and family through storytelling, photographs, and/or more recently via the use of technology such as video calls, encrypted communication apps, and via social media. One family living in Arizona receives video calls from their father every day at 7:30 pm in spite of the father being in a detention facility in Florence. We have also observed the incorporation of visual symbols and meaningful or faith-based mementos either intentionally placed in a wall or area of the home or used on their person. For example, the mother of a young girl whose father was detained, deported, and at the time of this writing remains in immigration custody, had an altar in the middle of their living room. In my own home, and in the homes of many immigrant children, crosses and religious imagery of the virgin decorate our/their walls. We have observed children wearing crosses or images of saints on their necks which generally are worn for protection. Through these symbols a sense of connection to values, culture, and religion of the homeland are instilled and maintained. In addition to the utilization of stories and symbols, it is important to consider the places that immigrant families inhabit, where they eat, buy groceries, what parks or community spaces they gather or

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spend time in, what areas of town they live in and why. All of these decisions considered together create a culture that is very particular to immigrant families living in the borderlands. In this sense they create and become a localized transborder culture, developing, whether intentionally or not, their own discourse and “acts of citizenship” that contest the dominant landscape, habitus, culture, labor, and land. Immigrant families enact their own sense of identity through shared language, rituals, and commonly shared struggles. Families also develop their own labor markets; with parallels in their nature to their legal status in that they are also highly mobile and transient. From selling raspados and corn on the street, to day laboring and/or cleaning houses, immigrant families find and create opportunities in the margins and in a third space that is neither legal nor completely unwelcomed. We observe these examples as innovative forms of survival illustrating the resilience and perseverance of migrant families as well as a way they create community and home. Another feature of transborder homes is that they shelter not only one but often multiple families. The more acculturated or assimilated families become the more likely they are to live alone. But even then, we recognize the role of family as playing a critical role in the identity of migrant families, particularly Mexican families. La Familia as a metaphor conveys a sense of responsibility to the larger whole as opposed to the western family that tends to focus more on the individual. When looking at patterns of migration flows, we observe this phenomenon unfolding. Immigrant families often migrate to areas where they know people. For example, in Arizona pockets of communities all from the same area in Mexico often settle in the same neighborhoods. An unspoken expectation instilled upon those who leave the homeland is that once they go, they will know not only where they come from, but in many respects what and who they are leaving behind. Immigrants attempt to show or reaffirm their sense of belonging to the former homeland in a myriad of ways, from preserving their native language and culture to sending money, goods, and correspondence back to their families in Mexico. Immigrant families navigate this vulnerability as companies attempt to capitalize and exploit these transborder economic transactions. We see these efforts as examples of codeswitching; another strategy employed by immigrant families and their children to juggle not only the two cultures they migrated to and from, but the active creation and

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innovation of a new one that enables them to contest space, laws, and identity from linear and fixed to open and in mobility and always becoming.

Language and Codeswitching Tongues explored the edges of words, especially the fat vowels. And we happily sounded that military drum roll, the twirling of the Spanish r. Family language: my family’s sounds. The voices of my parents and sisters and brother. Their voices insisting: You belong here. We are family members. Related. Special to one another. Listen! (Rodriguez, 1981: 11)

How does home language relate to home and how do children understand bi- or multilingualism? As Arias (2021) argues, a child’s language is not only linked to their identity—it is them. When the home and school language are different or even in conflict, with speaking one’s mother tongue discouraged or being labeled an English language learner, home may be marginalized or misunderstood. In Hunger of Memory, Rodriguez (1981), powerfully described the way he felt when he heard his parents speak to him in Spanish and how this would contrast with the sounds of the outside world. My parents would say something to me and I would feel embraced by the sounds of their words. Those sounds said: I am speaking with ease in Spanish. I am addressing you in words I never use with los gringos. I recognize you as someone special, close, like no one outside. You belong with us. In the family. (16)

Bilingualism and multilingualism are skills of resiliency and developed to make home space with family. We see the ways in which migrant and transborder children innovate through language and develop their own ways of communication and resilience (Maldonado & Swadener, 2021). Children’s ability to navigate different settings and contexts and use what they perceived to be the “correct” language illustrates their awareness and agency. In our interviews with children (Maldonado et al., 2019, 2020) as well as in more recent interactions with youth affected by the sudden detention of their parents, we observed this dynamic. Children at times stated they preferred a particular language but mid-conversation would switch languages to adapt to the perceived context in which they were speaking. For instance, some children would at times assume that we (as researchers)

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favored English, and therefore would state that they only spoke English, but later as rapport was built they would admit or convey in some way, that they knew Spanish or another dialect, “I actually know some words” they might say. Immigrant children are in some cases trilingual, with limited or full knowledge of an indigenous language, as we found in Mississippi. One child (“Diego”) we interviewed discussed the idea of “almost understanding”: Interviewer: And your family speaks Spanish too? Diego: A lot. Interviewer: A lot? Oh. And what do you like most about speaking two languages? Diego: Well, that I can almost understand the two things. (Maldonado & Swadener, 2021) The transborder region, in sum, becomes a space of resistance to inequality, generating border life as necessarily innovative, mixed with opportunities and creativity amidst tragedy and inequality (Velez-Ibanez & Heyman, 2017). We see the ways in which migrant and transborder children innovate and transform their lived realities, developing their own ways of communication and discovering areas of power and resistance.

Conclusion As we return to our initial query, what does it mean to call a place home? The experiences of migrant families and young immigrant children raise issues and contradictions to common sense understandings of home. When home is dangerous, denied, or multi-sited as with transborder communities, where is home? Who defines home? How do families create the experience of home? What meanings does “homeland” and homeland security have for immigrant and asylum-seeking families? We find hope in deconstructing not only the physical borders that geographically separate us but those that metaphorically continue to otherize and dehumanize those sitting on the other side. Immigrant families are vulnerable to discrimination, racial profiling, and the systemic violation of their civil and human rights. In the name of public safety children as young as newborns have been separated from their mothers. In the name of national security, immigrant children fleeing violent and life-threatening conditions are encaged. In the name of

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education, immigrant children are robbed of their history and self-confidence as they enter an education system intentionally blind to their lived realities. In the name of being one nation under God, American children in Arizona are forced to take a moment of silence after the reciting of the pledge of allegiance. All of these commitments to a narrative full of insincerity and contradictory messages exist unconfronted. As Roe v. Wade becomes another scene in the theater of American politics, we can’t help but pause and connect how we got here and why. In many ways this country teaches us that the national home only embraces certain bodies but not others. In the name of the sanctity of life, the rights of women are yet again under threat. Taking into consideration the historical context in which immigration laws were developed and the political landscape that nourishes them, it is important to call out the race-based and imperial capitalist motivations that sustain them. When a political spectacle of enforcement is fabricated to instill fear and a reality that cannot be verified or touched, children and more specifically BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) children’s safety and well-being becomes jeopardized. Education, critical race, border, social justice, and human rights scholars and organizers must continue to advocate for more inclusive spaces of belonging. We must demand from ourselves and from our communities a sense of duty towards everyone around us. We are in so many ways each other’s home, and in these borderless spaces we must build together a nomadic ever evolving society and self that mothers and preserves at its very core the remembrance of where we have been and are going. We are already there if only in moments or in our traveling in dreams of those before us. No podemos dejar de recordar that we can almost understand the two things.

References Anzaldua, G. (1987). Borderlands/la Frontera: The new mestiza. Aunt Lute Books. Arias, M. B. (2021). I am my language (pp. 24–26). Language Magazine. https:// www.languagemagazine.com/2022/05/17/i-­am-­my-­language/ Bermeo, S. (2019, June 18). Could foreign aid help stop Central Americans from coming to the U.S.? Here’s what you need to know. Washington Post. Available at: h t t p s : / / w w w. w a s h i n g t o n p o s t . c o m / p o l i t i c s / 2 0 1 9 / 0 6 / 1 8 / trump-­a dministration-­t hreatened-­c ut-­f oreign-­a id-­i f-­c entral-­a merican-­ countries-­dont-­stem-­migration/

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Maldonado, A., Swadener, B. B., & Khaleesi, C. (2020). Immigrant children in Arizona: Social justice implications for education in the borderlands. In S. A. Kessler & B. B. Swadener (Eds.), Educating for social justice in early childhood (pp. 3–19). Routledge. McEwen, M.  K. (2003). New perspectives on identity development. In S. R. Komives & D. B. Woodard Jr. (Eds.), Student services: A handbook for the profession (4th ed., pp. 203–233). Jossey-Bass. O’Brien, L., & Swadener, B. B. (2006). Writing the motherline: Mothers, daughters and education. University Press of America. Purnell, D. (2021). Becoming abolitionists: Police, protests, and the pursuit of freedom. Astra House. Rodriguez, R. (1981). Hunger of memory: The education of Richard Rodriguez. D.R. Solis, R. (2019, August 7). Largest US immigration raids in a decade net 680 arrests. Associated Press. https://apnews.com/article/donald-­trump-­us-­news-­ ap-­top-­news-­arrests-­immigration-­bbcef8ddae4e4303983c91880559cf23 Solorzano, D., & Yosso, T. (2002). Critical race methodology: Counter storytelling as an analytical framework for education research. Qualitative Inquiry, 8(1), 23–44. Toomey, R.  B., Umaña-Taylor, A.  J., Williams, D.  R., Harvey-Mendoza, E., Jahromi, L.  B., & Updegraff, K.  A. (2014). Impact of Arizona’s SB 1070 immigration law on utilization of health care and public assistance among Mexican-origin adolescent mothers and their mother figures. American Journal of Public Health, 104(Suppl 1), S28–S34. Retrieved from https://doi. org/10.2105/AJPH.2013.301655 Velez-Ibanez, C. G., & Heyman, J. (2017). The U.S. Mexico transborder region: Cultural dynamics and historical interactions. The University of Arizona Press. Wood, L.  C. (2018, September 26). Impact of punitive immigration policies, parent-­child separation and child detention on the Mental Health and development of children. BMJ pediatrics open. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih. gov/30306145/ Ybarra, R. (2007). Crossing the border: Human mobility as a human right. Movement Vision Lab. Ybarra Maldonado, R. (2013). Born on the border: Minuteman vigilantes, origins of the anti-immigrant movement in Arizona, and a call for increased civil disobedience. Hispanic Institute for Social Issues.

Theorizing Architectures of Home Marek Tesar

This chapter delves into the intricate entanglements of realms of home, structures, migration and belonging. Drawing inspiration from the stories of families with young children who have journeyed to Aotearoa New Zealand, this chapter embarks on a conceptual exploration of what their “architectures of home” could be, and how these concepts are theorized through key philosophies and theories. In order to achieve that, the narratives of home, homelessness, longing, transition, opportunity, and absence are discussed and theorized as the multifaceted nature of home is considered (Arndt & Tesar, 2019). The aim is to present architectures of home in both a literal and a metaphorical sense, and invite readers to renegotiate their concepts of architectures of home. The chapter is centred around the narrative and data set from a pre-COVID-19 immigrant families study. I theorize this narrative and relevant concepts through philosophical thinking around the notion of home, and chart the picture of the architectures of home in both a literal and a metaphorical sense. Understanding the architectures of home is a deeply personal and complex endeavour. It encompasses not only the physical structures that

M. Tesar (*) University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Gibbons et al. (eds.), Home in Early Childhood Care and Education, Critical Cultural Studies of Childhood, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43695-6_7

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provide shelter but also the intangible elements that evoke feelings of safety, comfort, belonging and wellbeing (Gould et  al., 2023; Tesar & Peters, 2019). By engaging with the narratives shared by immigrant families, this chapter weaves an intricate web of emotions and experiences that reorientates readers’ relationship with the architectures of home and the relevant concepts (Riberio et al., 2023). Central to this chapter’s exploration is the recognition that the idea of home is not a static entity, but rather a dynamic construct that evolves and transforms over time. The topic is approached through the lens of philosophical thinking, delving into the questions surrounding the nature of home and people’s place within it. Building upon the philosophical perspectives of phenomenology and existentialism (Peters et al., 2020b), this chapter delves into the lived experiences of immigrant families and examines how their subjective perceptions shape their understanding of home, through four philosophical streams.

Phenomenology, Existentialism, Poststructuralism, and Posthumanism In this section, I introduce how I theorize architectures of homes through four philosophical perspectives. Phenomenology, as expounded by thinkers such as Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, engages in the ways in which families interact with their lived environments. Through this lens, in this chapter, it is possible to uncover the layers of meaning that individuals ascribe to their physical surroundings and how these meanings contribute to their sense of home. This means paying particular attention to the phenomenological notion of “dwelling” which emphasizes the intimate, foundational caring relationship between individuals and the spaces they inhabit (Ailwood et  al., 2022). On the other hand, Existentialism, with its emphasis on individual existence and the search for meaning, offers valuable insights into how I explore architectures of home. Through the work of Jean-Paul Sartre and Martin Heidegger, it is possible to examine how individuals grapple with questions of belonging, authenticity, and identity in relation to their sense of home. Existentialist philosophy allows us to delve into the existential anxieties and aspirations that underpin our engagement with home, highlighting the temporal aspects of our mundane encounters and the pursuit of a meaningful existence. By delving into the stories of these families, it is clear that concepts of home extend beyond

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the physical boundaries of a dwelling. It encompasses the cultural, social, and emotional landscapes that migrant families traverse as they navigate their lives. This chapter dissects the complexities of these narratives, revealing the nuanced interplay between physical environments and the subjective experiences of home, and traverses into spaces of publicness and social justice (Biesta et al., 2021). In addition to phenomenology and existentialism, this chapter also focuses on how poststructuralist theories can expand our understanding of home. Poststructuralist thinkers Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze provide critical perspectives on power dynamics and the construction of space (Tesar et al., 2021b). With them, I am keen to think how societal structures and discourses shape the notion of home and influence individuals’ experiences within it. These analyses seek to transcend the confines of a purely literal interpretation of architecture, embracing a metaphorical understanding that illuminates the layers of meaning woven into the fabric of the notion of home. Through this exploration, this chapter aspires to challenge conventional notions of home, encouraging the reader to re-­ negotiate how the idea of home or dwelling has a profound significance in their life. Finally, from a posthumanist perspective, via the work of Rosi Braidotti (2013), concepts of home take on new dimensions that challenge traditional human-centred perspectives. Braidotti’s posthumanist philosophy emphasizes the interconnectedness of humans and non-human entities, as well as the fluidity and hybridity of identities. By integrating posthumanist ideas into our exploration of home, it is possible to delve into the ways in which these theories expand our understanding of the concept. Posthumanism challenges the notion of home as a solely human-­ centred space and invites us to consider the entanglements and relationships between humans, their physical environments, and non-human entities. This perspective highlights the multispecies cohabitation that occurs within the concept of home, acknowledging that human and non-­ human beings co-exist and shape one another’s experiences within these spaces. Through these four philosophical approaches, this chapter offers a multidimensional understanding of home and its temporalities, and re-reading a data set (observations, narratives, ethnography) collected with immigrant families in urban Auckland. By engaging with these narratives of the youngest migrant children and their families, it is hoped to provoke thought, reflection, and a reimagining of the spaces we inhabit. Through an entanglement of theories, stories, and philosophical thinking, this

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chapter aims to interrogate architectures of home and our place within them, and in doing so, unravel the intricacies of home and its profound impact on our lives (Tesar et al., 2021a). All these philosophies are underpinned by various concepts, that are important to conceptualize: Home as a place of security and comfort. Home is where individuals feel safe and secure, surrounded by familiar people and things that bring comfort and joy. This idea of home as a sanctuary has been present in literature and culture for centuries and continues to be a central aspect of modern concepts of home. Home as a reflection of identity. Our homes can reflect our personalities, values, and lifestyle, and can serve as a physical representation of who we are. Our homes are spaces where we can express ourselves freely and create environments that reflect our individual tastes and preferences. Home as a place of growth and development. Home is a place where children grow and develop, and where families can support each other and nurture positive relationships. This idea of home as a place of growth and development is central to early childhood education and development theories, as well as parenting and family support programs. Home as a cultural construct. Concepts of home can vary greatly across cultures shaped by a range of cultural, historical, and social factors. For example, the idea of home in Western societies has changed significantly over the past few centuries, reflecting changes in attitudes towards family, work, and lifestyle. Home as a place of community. Home is a place where individuals can connect with their community and participate in the cultural and social life of their neighbourhood. This idea of home as a place of community has been central to urban planning and design, as well as to discussions about the importance of creating liveable, sustainable, and inclusive communities for all children (Gibbons et al., 2021a, b).

The Concepts of Home In this section, the above philosophies (and concepts) are explored in relation to the concepts of home. I have already introduced them above, but it is important to further emphasize that Phenomenology allows for exploration of the subjective experiences and perceptions of individuals within the home environment, while Existentialism delves into the existential aspects of home, such as the search for meaning and belonging.

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Poststructuralism illuminates the power dynamics and discourses that shape our understanding of home, and posthumanism allows me to decentre the human yet seek deep connections between human and non-human subjects and objects. Phenomenological perspectives of Merleau-Ponty offer useful insights into understanding of the concepts of home. Husserl’s phenomenology is concerned with the subjective experience of consciousness and the ways in which individuals perceive and interpret the world. Using this lens with the concepts of home, the lived experiences of individuals and their subjective understanding of what constitutes a home can be analysed. Merleau-­ Ponty’s (1945) phenomenological approach emphasizes the embodied nature of perception and experience. He argues that our bodily interactions with the world shape how we understand our surroundings. In the context of home, Merleau-Ponty’s perspective encourages us to consider how our physical presence and sensory experiences within a space contribute to our sense of belonging and attachment. By employing the phenomenological theories of Merleau-Ponty, we debate how individuals’ lived experiences shape their understanding of home, and we can delve into the intricate details of sensory perceptions, bodily interactions, and the meanings ascribed to the physical and emotional aspects of the home environment (Malone et al., 2019). Existentialist philosophers Sartre and Heidegger offer useful insights into the concepts of home by focusing on individual existence, authenticity, and the search for meaning. For Sartre (1943), existence precedes essence, meaning that individuals create their own meaning and purpose in life. Applying this existentialist perspective to the concept of home, we can view it as a space where individuals assert their existence, find meaning, and establish a sense of identity. Heidegger’s (1951) existential analysis emphasizes the concept of dwelling, which goes beyond the mere physicality of a home. Dwelling is about being at home in the world, finding a sense of belonging and attunement to one’s surroundings. From a Heideggerian perspective, home is not limited to a physical structure but includes the broader cultural, historical, and social context in which one exists. By drawing upon existentialist theories, further existential anxieties and aspirations that underpin our engagement with home can be discussed, and how the search for meaning, the desire for authenticity and the longing for a sense of belonging shape our experiences and perceptions of home (Tesar, 2021).

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Poststructuralist thinkers like Foucault and Deleuze offer critical perspectives on power relations and the construction of space and place, useful considerations in concepts of home. Foucault’s (1977) analyses of power relations can help us understand how social and cultural forces shape the notion of home. By examining the ways in which discourses and societal structures influence our understanding and experience of home, we have insights into the power/knowledge dynamics at play. Similarly, Deleuze’s philosophy challenges traditional notions of identity, subjectivity, and space. Through Deleuzian (1986) concepts, the home can be viewed as a multiplicity of connections, intensities, and flows, rather than a fixed entity. This perspective encourages us to explore the fluidity and complexity of our engagements with home, acknowledging that it is not a static construct but constantly evolving and entangled with various forces. Through poststructuralist theories, particularly the analysis of disciplinary technologies by Foucault, it is possible to engage in a critical examination of the construction of home, the power dynamics that shape it, and the intricate interplay of subjectivities and identities within its boundaries. Foucault’s concept of disciplinary technologies provides valuable insights into the mechanisms through which power operates within societal institutions, including the home. His examination of disciplinary technologies reveals how power is exercised through a range of techniques and practices that regulate and control individuals’ behaviours and bodies. These disciplinary mechanisms extend beyond conventional institutions and permeate into everyday spaces, such as the home. By adopting a poststructuralist lens informed by Foucault’s insights, it is possible to uncover the power relations embedded within the construction of home, exposing the ways in which social norms, ideologies, and disciplinary practices shape our experiences and interactions within domestic environments. In return, by exploring the disciplinary technologies at work in the home, it is possible to critically analyse the power dynamics that underpin its formation. This perspective prompts a consideration of how systems of surveillance, normalization, and examination contribute to the shaping of home as a site of control and regulation. Additionally, it encourages an examination of the ways in which individuals negotiate and navigate these power dynamics, while also acknowledging the resistance and agency that can emerge within such contexts. Finally, Posthumanism, influenced by Rosi Braidotti’s (2013), challenges static concepts of home by presenting it as a dynamic construct that evolves over time. It invites us to explore the interconnectedness between

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humans, non-human entities, and the environments they inhabit. Home is no longer confined to a physical space but encompasses the complex relationships and entanglements between humans, animals, plants, and the environment. Additionally, posthumanism prompts us to consider the impact of technology and digital spaces on our sense of home, blurring the boundaries between physical and digital environments and expanding our understanding of what constitutes a home. By integrating posthumanist perspectives, it is possible to embrace inclusive and expansive view of home. It becomes a site where fixed notions of identity and subjectivity are challenged, allowing for the expression of diverse and evolving identities. Home becomes a dynamic and ever-evolving concept that extends beyond the confines of a dwelling, incorporating the fluidity of relationships, identities, and environments in our posthuman world. In this way, posthumanism invites us to reimagine home as a complex and interconnected web of experiences, where humans, non-human entities, technology, and the environment converge (Tesar et al., 2021c, d).

Data/Prelude These philosophical perspectives guided me as a researcher conducting ethnographic research with immigrant families in urban Auckland, where I employed a combination of observations and interviews, and ethnographies, to gather rich and nuanced data about their experiences. By immersing myself in their daily lives and engaging in conversations with family members including young children, I aimed to gain a comprehensive understanding of their challenges, aspirations, and cultural practices within the context of their new environment. Through participant observations, I had the privilege of witnessing the families’ routines and social interactions firsthand. Spending time in their homes and community spaces allowed me to observe the dynamics of family relationships, the utilization of space within their households, and the ways in which cultural traditions were preserved and adapted. These observations provided valuable insights into the families’ daily lives, highlighting the importance of family bonds, the negotiation of cultural identities, and the role of community networks in their integration process. In addition to observations, conducting interviews was a fundamental aspect of my data collection process. Sitting down with individuals within the immigrant families enabled me to delve deeper into their personal narratives, beliefs, and experiences. Through open-ended questions and active

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listening, I created a safe and supportive environment where participants could openly share their stories. These interviews revealed the complex interplay of cultural heritage, aspirations for a better future, and the challenges they faced in navigating the new cultural and social landscape. It was a time marked by changes in immigration policies and societal attitudes towards immigrants. By understanding the sociopolitical context in which the families were situated, I gained a deeper appreciation for the various external factors that influenced their lives. This temporal dimension of data collection highlighted the resilience and adaptability of immigrant families, shedding light on their responses to the evolving social dynamics and policy landscape. Through participant observations, I witnessed the intricate details of their daily routines and cultural practices, while interviews allowed me to explore their personal narratives, aspirations, and challenges in greater depth, and contextualized their experiences within the dynamic sociopolitical climate, contributing to a more comprehensive understanding of their journeys of adaptation and integration, as the following data offer.

Data/Architectures of Home I park my car in an Auckland neighbourhood which I do not often visit on Saturdays. I walk to the house from a busy main street and meet Andi. Andi invites me inside his family house. His family emigrated to New Zealand about one year ago from South-East Asia. Their daughter, Fatma, who recently turned four, is part of our study in a local early childhood centre where the 36 enrolled children represent 34 different ethnicities. One of the aims of this study is to visit the homes where children are growing up and to have a conversation with parents about their experiences of childcare and local places and spaces. This is Fatma’s home. I do not need to ask many questions. Andi offers a long narrative straight away: Back home, it is difficult, not easy. People do things for themselves, children are often spoiled or starving. Home was always difficult. New Zealand from outside seemed to be for everybody, on the surface; however in the end it became the same as back home. There are elite people or elite groups of people, that’s for whom New Zealand is. They can really live and find the home that we came here to search for. My cousin is in England and his wife’s brother-in-law in the USA. They see each day the same things as I do here. I came here because I’ve heard: New Zealand is different; that everybody is treated the same way; that everybody is fair and you get the fair treatment, you get fair benefits;

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that the country is more open or more good compared to our country, and to other countries; that weather is mild. We watched Lord of the Rings before we came here. It was long! And the country looked so amazing, But I do not see that country, that nature. We almost never get out of the city. We know the mall well. And now I do wonder what is this land, for which I have left my home. If this new home will ever live up to the expectations, that was built up in mine and my wife’s minds, and whether we have asked the right questions during our time of leaving our home? What will my children experience in our new-found home? It’s my hope that my children will have a better life, that they will have enough money, that they will be happy, that they will have children of their own one day, and will be able to provide for their children better than I ever could. Andi, who works as a seasonal helper in a warehouse, takes me around his home. It is a small house, very cold and damp. He shows me the small garden/backyard where Fatma plays with her older brothers Hasan and Amir. Fatma recognizes me and acts shy. There are loud and sharp words coming her way from Andi in the language I do not speak, and Fatma comes to us and says hi. The house is mouldy; the garden is tiny and faces one of the main motorways. There is a constant humming noise and a surprising level of traffic for a Saturday afternoon. Fatma is out in the garden again. One striking aspect that emerged during my fieldwork was the presence of mould in houses. The pervasive issue of mould was a recurrent concern raised by the immigrant families I engaged with. Upon closer inspection, I observed the visible signs of mould growth on walls, ceilings, and even on household items. The dampness and musty odour in the air were indicative of a deeper problem within the living environment. Mould, often caused by excessive moisture and poor ventilation, can have detrimental effects on both physical health and overall wellbeing. Its presence in the houses of immigrant families highlighted the challenges they faced in maintaining a healthy and comfortable living space. The growth of mould can exacerbate respiratory conditions, trigger allergies, and contribute to a sense of discomfort and dissatisfaction with the home environment. “Look” says Andi, pointing to the black mould and moisture in the uninsulated home. “We could be better off homeless and I could save some money, than living like this. It is not fair”. I asked him if his wife, Annisa, went shopping. He said no—she “needs to work over weekends”. “I miss my home” says Andi, and quickly explains that he refers to the “home where his whole family is together”. “When someone is missing, it

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cannot be called home… I used to work as a scientist back in Indonesia”, he says, “but no one believes me here”. Andi quickly moves me past the wall covered with black mould. The moisture is everywhere. Fatma is part of our research project in the local community centre. Andi starts talking about Fatma: “Fatma loves the local early childhood centre. She has friends from all around the neighbourhood. But not ‘the rich kids’”, he says and looks at me in a way that I should understand that statement. “Teachers are very nice, but the owner makes a lot of money. Someone saw him driving the new BMW”, he says. He looks outside to the street where his old car is parked. I am glad that I’ve parked my station wagon around the corner. I asked him whether Fatma likes the early childhood centre. “She does. But there is too much play, too much care. It was explained to me many times that play is learning, but I do want my child to learn proper things. Things that will change her life into a different life. I do want my child to learn, to have knowledge, to be successful, to live a better life in New Zealand than I do. How much play do you need as a child?”, he asks, picking up toys from the ground to make his way into the kitchen. Andi is making us a cup of tea. Back home I think of the architecture of their home again, the leaky, porous architecture of Andi’s home—leaky architecture that positions their home as thought-out arrangements and living with an unknown number of loose and open elements. However, any perceived structural element is only elusive or at least unstable and ambiguous. This ambiguity of leaky architecture enables paradoxical thinking, contradictory practices, and organic formations. The leaky architecture of Andi’s home serves as a thinking tool and doing practice to organize schooling activities, and methodologies of the mundane (Adriany et al., 2020). Rather than thinking of a home as something romantic, learnable and understandable, the leaky architecture utilizes form, lines, space, matter, and interrelatedness as elements to think about its design (Koro-Ljungberg et al., 2019). The leaky structure of Andi’s mundane home-methodology brings together porosity, fluidity, and bruteness in the context of shifting perceptions, practices, and enactments with the new concept of “home”, defined by its impersonal power (Adriany & Tesar, 2022). Philosopher Havel (1985: 59) argued: The question is whether we shall, by whatever means, succeed in reconstituting the world as the true terrain of politics, rehabilitating the personal experience of human beings as the initial measure of things, placing morality

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above politics and responsibility above our desires, in making human community meaningful, in returning content to human speech, in reconstituting, as the focus of all social action, the autonomous, integral, and dignified human “I,” responsible for ourselves because we are bound to something higher, and capable of sacrificing something, in extreme cases even everything, of this banal, prosperous private life - that “rule of everydayness,” for the sake of that which gives life meaning. It really is not all that important whether, by accident of domicile, we confront a Western manager or an Eastern bureaucrat in this very modest and yet globally crucial struggle against the momentum of impersonal power.

Leaky architecture: Plato, Spinoza, Hegel, Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, Barad. So many philosophers can be thought with to theorize the home, the architecture, the leakiness of Andi’s family home (Tesar, 2016). However, I want to re-engage with Andi’s voice. When I was leaving the house, Andi looks at me as he says: “I want my children, and their children, to think that I’ve made a good decision coming to New Zealand. I think I did—but how do I know? I am still waiting for this place to become my home”. The narrative data set provides rich material for analysis through the lens of various philosophers, including Merleau-Ponty, Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Foucault, Deleuze, and Braidotti. We are keen to hear Andi, an immigrant living in New Zealand, and his experiences of home and belonging. Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology can shed light on Andi’s lived experiences of his physical surroundings, such as the cold, damp house and the small, traffic-facing garden. Husserl’s phenomenological perspective can help uncover the layers of meaning Andi ascribes to his environment and how it shapes his sense of home (Hood & Tesar, 2019). Heidegger’s existentialist philosophy becomes relevant in understanding Andi’s quest for a meaningful existence in his new-found home. Andi’s expectations of New Zealand, influenced by cultural narratives and representations, are contrasted with his actual experiences. Sartre’s existential anxieties, such as questions of belonging and identity, resonate with Andi’s reflections on his decision to immigrate and his aspirations for his children’s future (Tesar & Arndt, 2019). Foucault’s analysis of power dynamics and Deleuze’s conceptualization of spaces can help examine the societal structures and discourses that shape Andi’s experiences of home (Tesar & Arndt 2020). The leaky architecture of Andi’s home, as described in the narrative, raises questions about the

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fluidity and ambiguity of spaces and their influence on personal and social practices. Braidotti’s posthumanist ideas prompt us to consider the interconnectedness between humans, non-human entities, and the environment in Andi’s understanding of home (Peters et al., 2020a, b).

Concluding Comments In conclusion, the exploration of the narrative data set through the lenses of philosophers such as Merleau-Ponty, Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Foucault, Deleuze, and Braidotti reveals the complex interplay between concepts of home, lived experiences, and societal dynamics. The stories of Andi and his family provide a poignant portrayal of the multifaceted nature of home, encompassing not only physical spaces but also cultural, social, and emotional landscapes. Through phenomenology, we gain insights into how individuals like Andi interact with their lived environments and construct their sense of home through subjective perceptions. Existentialist philosophies shed light on the existential anxieties, aspirations, and questions of identity that underlie the search for meaning and belonging in a new place. Poststructuralist theories allow us to critically examine the power dynamics and discourses that shape the notion of home, expanding our understanding beyond a literal interpretation of architecture. By engaging with Andi’s experiences, we confront the complexities of migration, cultural expectations, and the pursuit of a better life for oneself and future generations. The leaky architecture of Andi’s home serves as a metaphorical backdrop, symbolizing the fluidity, ambiguity, and challenges inherent in the process of constructing a new home. Ultimately, this exploration invites us to challenge conventional notions of home and to reevaluate the significance of dwelling in our lives. It prompts us to consider the implications of power structures, cultural narratives, and subjective experiences on our understanding of home. By delving into these narratives, we gain a deeper appreciation for the diverse and nuanced ways in which individuals navigate their sense of belonging and find meaning within the spaces they inhabit. In the end, the study of posthumanism and concepts of home calls us to reflect on the profound human need for connection, belonging, and a place to call home, while recognizing the dynamic and evolving nature of this construct in an increasingly interconnected and complex world.

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References Adriany, V., & Tesar, M. (2022). Unpacking the discourses of stunting in Indonesian early childhood education and parenting. Children and Society, 37(2), 311–325. https://doi.org/10.1111/chso.12593 Adriany, V., et  al. (2020). Satu Desa Satu Paud  – One village, one centre: Unpacking the meaning of children’s participation within ECE policy and provision in Indonesia. In J. Murray, B. B. Swadener, & K. Smith (Eds.), Routledge international handbook of young children’s rights (pp. 66–76). Routledge. Ailwood, J., et al. (2022). Communities of care: A collective writing project on philosophies, politics, and pedagogies of care and education in the early years. Policy Futures in Education, 20(8), 907–921. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 14782103211064440 Arndt, S., & Tesar, M. (2019). Reconfiguring narrative methodologies: Thresholds of realities in post-qualitative methodologies. In S. Farquhar & E. Fitzpatrick (Eds.), Innovations in narrative and metaphor: Methodologies and practices (pp. 133–148). Springer. Biesta, G., et  al. (2021). Philosophy of education in a new key: Publicness, social justice, and education: A South-North conversation. Education Philosophy and Theory, 54(8), 1216–1233. https://doi.org/10.1080/0013185 7.2021.1929172 Braidotti, R. (2013). The posthuman. Polity Press. Deleuze, G. (1986). Foucault. University of Minnesota Press. Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. Vintage Books. Gibbons, A., et al. (2021a). Infantologies II: Songs of the cradle: An EPAT collective writing project. Educational Philosophy and Theory. https://doi.org/1 0.1080/00131857.2021.1906646 Gibbons, A., et  al. (2021b). Infantasies. An EPAT collective writing project. Educational Philosophy and Theory. https://doi.org/10.1080/0013185 7.2020.1860749 Gould, K., et  al. (2023). Equity, inclusion, and belonging for teachers in early childhood education in Aotearoa New Zealand. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood. https://doi.org/10.1177/14639491231152617 Havel, V. (1985). The power of the powerless. In J. Keane (Ed.), The power of the powerless: Citizens against the State in Central – Eastern Europe (pp. 23–96). Hutchinson. Heidegger, M. (1951). Building dwelling thinking. In A. Hofstadter (Ed.), Poetry, language, thought. Harper & Row. Hood, N., & Tesar, M. (2019). Postdigital childhoods in the time of anthropocene. Postdigital Science in Education, 1(2), 307–310. https://doi.org/ 10.1007/s42438-­019-­00062-­x

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Koro-Ljungberg, M., et  al. (2019). Porous, fluid, and brut methodologies in (post)qualitative childhood/nature inquiry. In C.  Mackenzie et  al. (Eds.), International handbook on childhood/nature: Assemblages of childhoods and nature research. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-­3-­319-­ 51949-­4_21-­2 Malone, K., et  al. (2019). Greedy bags of childhoodnature theories. In C.  Mackenzie et  al. (Eds.), International handbook on childhood/nature: Assemblages of childhoods and nature research. Springer. https://doi. org/10.1007/978-­3-­319-­51949-­4_3-­2 Merleau-Ponty, M. (1945). Phenomenology of perception. Routledge. Peters, M. A., et al. (2020a). Infantologies: An EPAT collective writing project. Educational Philosophy and Theory. https://doi.org/10.1080/0013185 7.2020.1835648 Peters, M. A., et al. (2020b). What comes after postmodernism in educational theory? Routledge. Riberio, R., et al. (2023). Childhood and time: A collective exploration. Journal of Childhood Studies, 48(1), 134–148. https://doi.org/10.18357/ jcs202320719 Sartre, J. P. (1943). Being and nothingness: An essay on phenomenological ontology. Philosophical Library. Tesar, M. (2016). Timing childhoods: An alternative reading of children’s development through philosophy of time, temporality, place and space. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 17(4), 399–408. https://doi.org/ 10.1177/1463949116677924 Tesar, M. (2021). Philosophy as a method: Tracing the histories of intersections of ‘philosophy’, ‘methodology’ and ‘education’. Qualitative Inquiry, 27(5), 544–553. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800420934144 Tesar, M., & Arndt, S. (2019). Writing the human “I”: Liminal spaces of mundane abjection. Qualitative inquiry. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800419881656 Tesar, M., & Arndt, S. (2020). Re-reading and re-activating Te Whāriki through a posthuman childhood studies lens. In A. Gunn & J. Nuttall (Eds.), Weaving Te Whāriki: Aotearoa New Zealand’s early childhood curriculum document in theory and practice (pp. 181–194). NZCER Press. Tesar, M., & Peters, M. A. (2019). Heralding ideas of well-being: A philosophical perspective. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 52(9), 923–927. https://doi. org/10.1080/00131857.2019.1696731 Tesar, M., et  al. (2021a). Philosophy of education in a new key: The future of philosophy of education. Educational Philosophy and Theory. https://doi. org/10.1080/00131857.2021.1946792

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Tesar, M., et al. (2021b). Postmodernism in education. In Oxford research encyclopedia of education. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/ acrefore/9780190264093.013.1269 Tesar, M., et al. (2021c). Infantmethodologies. Educational Philosophy and Theory. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2021.2009340 Tesar, M., et  al. (2021d). Infantographies. Educational Philosophy and Theory. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2021.2009341

The Things of Home: Histories, People, Stories, Belonging Sonya Gaches

At a 2017 conference, I presented an autoethnography about my then-­ recent experiences finding a sense of “home” as I settled into a new physical space in a country far from my original homes. Several years have passed now but that presentation has remained ever-present as I continue to think, problematise, question, struggle and theorise these experiences and how they might connect to my new environment, the wider world and, most importantly, to the lives of young children. I also question my audacity to think that my privileged experiences might even matter amongst the many far greater issues of today (e.g., poverty, war, pandemics, homelessness, the list goes on and on). What I share here is a weaving together of my original autoethnography, ensuing thoughts as I learn more about my new home-land of Aotearoa me Te Waipounamu New Zealand,1 and connections to young children’s lives. I do so with the hope of provoking your own musings, theorising and potential actions, in relation to how things-of-home with their related histories, people and stories

S. Gaches (*) College of Education, The University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Gibbons et al. (eds.), Home in Early Childhood Care and Education, Critical Cultural Studies of Childhood, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43695-6_8

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might help create a sense of belonging-home, especially for young children. First, I share a narrative taking the reader to the moments when I realised that there was something unexpected happening that was provoking me to reconceptualise my notions of home and what it meant to be at home. The chapter then explores what these moments might mean in relation to notions of home, belonging and our things. Finally, what the things of home might mean for young children in their daily lives will be considered.

The Original Autoethnographic Moment It had been four months since nearly all our worldly possessions were packed into little brown boxes and shipped across the planet. I felt very privileged to make this move; my husband and I chose this move chasing a wonderful opportunity and a new adventure. We had many costs paid for by others. We were able to find a residence in a location that we could only have fantasized of visiting much less ever living in – lush green hills, the interplay of ocean water with islands and inlets, walking trails alongside ancient, towering trees and fronds of fern, and the promise of visits from ocean creatures from gigantic to tiny. Even though we had left many loved ones behind, we were on top of the world, emotionally and physically (depending on how you geographically conceptualise “top” of the world). So I found myself unpacking yet another box. This was a box filled with mementos, each meticulously wrapped in newsprint and neatly stacked. Each item I carefully revealed was met with a smile, a small sigh and an occasional, “Awww…”. These were old friends of mine, my first dog (a stuffed black Scottie dog, uncreatively named “Scottie”), my bears (Brownie, Pandie and Winnie), fancy dolls from my aunts, my well-loved and worn baby-dolls, the doll my mother cared for and carried with her throughout her tumultuous childhood, the patched loveys of my own now-grown children and several more special friends. As I continued unpacking, unwrapping, smiling and sighing I suddenly realised that my cheeks were wet. I was surprised to find myself crying. This caught me completely off guard. Why was I crying? What was happening here? I certainly wasn’t feeling sad. I was feeling a deep sense of “rightness”. All of a sudden, this new place, over eight thousand miles from where I started in life, suddenly felt like HOME. Why? I had to ask myself. What was it about THESE items that made this place suddenly feel like home? And given these are children’s things, how

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might this experience connect with children’s lives and their own special possessions? (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1  Childhood artefacts unpacked and on display

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Making Sense of the Moment In what follows I move back and forth in time, weaving among the strands of my original experience with these “things of home”; the theoretical musings of that moment; my evolving understandings of te ao Māori; how these understandings relate to Te Wha ̄riki, the early childhood curriculum of my new home-country (Ministry of Education [MoE], 2017); and to possibilities for children’s lives on a broader scale.

Questions of Significance in My Story In this moment standing amongst the dolls with my cheeks still damp from surprise-tears, there was a realisation that something significant was happening and my researcher brain became engaged. I wondered, was this a moment that others might find significant in some way? We make sense of our lives and experiences through story (Dewey, 1969; Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). Autoethnography is a particular type of storytelling. Ellis et  al. (2011: 273) define autoethnography as “an approach to research and writing that seeks to describe and systematically analyse (graphy) personal experience (auto) in order to understand cultural experience (ethno)”. Autoethnographies can be sparked by an epiphany. According to Ellis et  al., an epiphany is a moment that plays a significant role in a person’s life. Perhaps it is an intense or emotional moment or perhaps it is an event that upon reflection has changed a person’s life trajectory. Memories from these moments, their related feelings and images, will continue to stay with a person even long after the event itself. However, the autoethnographer cannot merely delve into their epiphanies and significant life moments for personal reflection, cathartic contemplation or introspective written narrative. An autoethnographer analyses these epiphanic moments, making sociological connections to how others may have had similar or contrasting experiences and considers related cultural practices and cultural identities. An autoethnographer calls upon existing research, making evident for others how their experiences and their epiphanies matter. As I came to feel the emotional impact of this epiphanic moment unpacking these dolls and toys, I realised that this was also an autoethnographic moment. I knew that these dolls and toys were now much more significant to me, as I came to see them as cultural artefacts holding the stories of my life experiences. (I still feel this even today, each time I pass

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the display cabinet on our second-floor landing holding these special items.) Even in the initial emotional moment, I had begun searching for further meaning, seeking connections to the experiences of others. In that moment, I first turned to familiar research and literature, most particularly the work of bell hooks (2009). This moment of epiphany has also lingered in my psyche as I have learnt more about my new home, its cultures, most especially te ao Ma ̄ori (Māori world view), and related cultural enactments, including the early childhood curriculum, Te Whāriki (Ministry of Education, 2017).

Connecting the Dolls with Place In bell hooks’ collection of essays entitled, belonging: a culture of place (2009), she writes about the pull to return home to her native place, her “old Kentucky home” (3). This place, filled with memories of generations of strife and of “internalised racism” (19), deeply affected her emotional wellbeing and development. On the one hand, her initial rural, native-­ home was comforting as a place to connect with nature, free adventure and self-determination. On the other hand, after a move to town, it was a place of segregation, violence, abject racism and fear. She had thought that when she moved away from Kentucky, she would escape the oppression and fear. However, what she found instead were other places that were not home. These were places where she could not be herself, could not speak in her Kentucky soft-drawl, could not worship as she always had, could not be who she felt she was. She was instead “endlessly running away from home” (17). hooks felt that writing about and narrativising her childhood, “would help bring order to my life… to create a clear detailed account of myself” (18). She felt that this writing would help her feel complete. This passage speaks to me as I attempt to make sense of my moment and what it might mean for myself and what it could mean for others, especially those who work with children. My own story, its histories and experiences, are quite different from those of bell hooks. I am a white, middle-class woman with a privileged, idealistic mid-twentieth century nuclear family, filled with popular-culture, romanticised frolics in the suburban backyard and with a materialistic bedroom filled with toys. This environment well illustrates a child’s world of the “dominator culture” (hooks, 2009: 8) of that time. Growing up, the closest I came to understanding or even contemplating bell hooks’ experiences and expressions of pervasive racism and violence was what I saw on

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the evening news and in the localised responses to civil unrest of the 1960s in the United States, most particularly in the Kansas City area. It further manifested in childhood confusions, such as why I couldn’t meet and play with sons of Sam, the African-American janitor in my father’s company. Every Saturday after my dance lesson in the city (again, acknowledging this privilege!) my father and I would return to his office for him to finish some work. Sam would let me tag along and together we would fill the soda machine, likely a ploy to distract this little girl so her dad could get his work done. Sam would tell me about his sons, one of whom was about my age, and all their mischievous antics. I wanted to meet these boys and share some mischief. I was told little girls like me couldn’t come to his neighbourhood and likewise, his sons wouldn’t be welcome in mine. I didn’t understand. bell hooks’ description of trying to find someplace where she truly belonged and felt at home resonates with me. Like many, I have searched for myself and my place to belong, never quite feeling like I fit. It has been a quieter, at times rather semi-self-imposed search for belonging, rife with privilege and possibilities, yet it is always on my mind. bell hooks (2009) describes that it was the richness of her life lived in Kentucky, the learned strategies of resistance and her physical connections to the soil that were her “source of life” (34), that “forged a tie to [her] native place that could not be severed” (19). As I unpacked those boxes, I was so very far away from the soil of my source of life with absolutely no desire to ever return to my native place. While the scenic vistas of the Flint Hills of Kansas often call to me, my own principles and values of inclusivity and equity often don’t belong alongside the politics, policies and daily life occurrences of much of my homeland. At one time bell hooks also felt that she would have no desire to return to her native place, even as she moved from city to city never feeling whole or that she belonged. The connection to the physical soil of where you originate has taken on new meaning for me as I have settled in Aotearoa me Te Waipounamu New Zealand. I have learned that from a te ao Māori perspective, te whenua (the land) is a sacred connection to your place of belonging (Boulton et al., 2021; Pere, 1997). This connection is so important that when you introduce yourself to new people, you often begin by reciting your pepeha, which is a formal introduction of who you are that includes the mountain, rivers, oceans and other geographical features from whence your ancestors have come. This physical place is your tūrangawaewae, where you have “the right to stand and a place where one has rights of

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residence and belonging through kinship and whakapapa” (Royal 2007 as cited in Boulton et al., 2021: 4). people and places where I belong draw your power. It is a place of spiritual connection so that you can move out into the world secure in this connection to your place (Pere, 1997). These physical features ground you in your connections to family, empower you and also nurture you. Based on the metaphor of a mother feeding her child from the breast in the night, ūkaipō speaks of the land’s ability to feed and nurture your emotional wellbeing, your wairua (spirit) and thus your whānau (family) and your whakapapa (genealogy) (Boulton et al., 2021; Barlow, 1991). This te ao Māori connection to land and place plays a central role in Te Whāriki (MoE, 2017), the early childhood curriculum of Aotearoa me Te Waipounamu New Zealand. One of the strands of Te Wha ̄riki2 is Belonging | Mana Whenua. The use of both English and te reo Māori is important here. As mentioned previously, there is a special relationship in te ao Māori between whenua and belonging. Mana is the power that resides in each of us, as it connects us to our ancestors, to the land, to others (Barlow, 1991; Pere, 1997) and in this case empowers children’s sense of belonging in their places. Te Whāriki further states that this sense of belonging “contributes to (children’s) wellbeing and gives them the confidence to try new experiences” (MoE 31). The strand of Wellbeing | Mana Atua within Te Wha ̄riki resonates strongly with hooks’ spiritual connection to the land. Mana Atua refers to one’s spiritual connections to godliness and the sacred world (Barlow, 1991), as a connectedness to one’s spiritual or soulful wellbeing. hooks described the land as her “source of life” (2009: 29). Likewise, children’s sense of belonging, their wellbeing and spiritual connectedness to the land are all intricately tied together, supporting children to confidently explore and find meaningfulness all around themselves. These understandings of spiritual connections to the land have prompted me to question my own connectedness to the soils of my whakapapa. Will I one day change my mind and feel a pull to return to the soil of the Kansas Flint Hills where I was born? I was not (and still am not) prepared to think so. Have I been missing out on some primordial connection to the soil? My ancestral legacy is filled with stories and experiences of oppressions/opportunities across two continents, forcing/ enticing us away from the soil upon which we originally lived. Throughout my childhood my grandparents shared these family stories of resistances and capitulations. Some ancestors chose to leave their lands in search of better opportunities. Other ancestors chose to flee their lands in fear of

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their lives. My grandfather and his brother (Self & Self, 1987) have detailed how our Muscogee (Creek) ancestors were manipulated to give up their land (and their daughters) to the British, were then forcibly removed farther from their lands, and then bought-off with land encroaching upon other indigenous peoples’ lands. As I have now moved far away from these lands to suit my own interests, am I disrespecting my ancestors by not forging ties to the lands that have played such enormous roles in our family history? In my original presentation and continuing throughout the ensuing thinking and theorising, I reflect upon my own audacity. As a white woman, privileged to be able to move about globally as I have done, what right did I have to put my story alongside that of others who have been, are and will continue to be, oppressed and removed from their lands based upon the colour of their skin or the histories of their families? Millions of people, including so many children, are displaced each year from their homes across the world due to natural disasters, violence and war.3 Children account for a disproportionate number of refugees, more than one-third of the world’s population and almost half of all refugees in 2020 (UNICEF, 2022). When thinking about the wellbeing of children under this level of duress, I wonder about the following: What becomes of these children’s connections to the land that has nourished and empowered them? How can early childhood educators and other adults foster their mana, wellbeing and sense of belonging when they or their families have been often forcibly removed from their lands or are unable to return? What can be done to help them feel they belong? The answers to these questions are beyond the scope of this chapter but are important points that need to be considered and ones that deserve further research and activism. Of course, many of these thoughts were happening as I stood there among my boxes, mounds of wrapping paper and the community of well-­ loved toys and dolls. I began crying even more because now I was confused about home—about my home, children’s homes, belonging and wellbeing. What is this thing called home? Where is home? Why do these what I had previously dismissed as “silly” toys and dolls feel so much like home? And how might these thoughts and emotions connect with other children’s dolls, blankets and stuffed animals that are lovingly carried around with them from place to place and to children who are not able to have these special items for one reason or another?

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Connecting the Dolls with People When bell hooks writes about Kentucky as her place of belonging, it’s not just a place on a map nestled between other states. Her essays aren’t verbal travel posters of green grass-covered hills, trees and Kentucky-bred horses running along white fences. hooks’ Kentucky is filled with stories of people, places and things. Her Kentucky is the stories of how generations of people learned to work in resistance so that they could live from this land. It is filled with stories of her mother, her father, grandparents and other elders, classmates and a myriad of other community members, named and nameless in these stories. In these stories, there are tobacco fields and tobacco barns, school buses, hills stripped for their resources and lush green hills. There are places of hate and places of love. Yet all of these places are connected through the stories bell hooks holds, tells and retells to herself and others that make Kentucky her home. For hooks, while Kentucky is the physical setting and the people, places and things are the characters, it is her narratives of those people and places that capture the essence of and document her sense of belonging. Returning to te ao Māori perspectives, while your pepeha often begins with connections to the physical lands from which you and your extended family have come, it then also includes the whakapapa connections to your people: your iwi (tribal), hapu (sub-tribe) and whānau (family). It is these family members, living and long-gone ancestors, who have “prepared the way for us” (Mead, 1993: 206). You include these people-relationships as part of your pepeha, the story of your belonging. It is your relationships to these geographical places AND people that shape your identity, and further ground you in who you are. Te Wha ̄riki (MoE, 2017) recognises the importance of this weaving together of the physical lands and the people in children’s whakapapa in the curriculum’s principle of Relationships | Ngā hononga. The curriculum reinforces that it is through children’s relationships with people, places and things that they can engage with and find/make meaning in their worlds. Central to this principle is that children have relationships with cultural tools of all sorts so that they can participate and contribute to their worlds. While Te Whāriki specifically includes “a map, a word, a gesture” (21), these cultural tools could also include children’s toys, dolls and the relationships they carry. Cultural tools relate to the child’s cultural ways of being, doing and knowing. The strand of Belonging | Mana Whenua in Te Whāriki further

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builds upon this link to children’s cultural tools with the statement that “Children are more likely to feel at home if they regularly see their own culture, language and world views valued in the ECE setting” (31). Therefore, it would make sense for children’s further cultural tools, such at their toys, dolls and the relationships with which they are associated were also welcomed into the early childhood setting. Additionally, whānau (extended families) should feel welcome and should feel their own sense of belonging in the early childhood setting. Early childhood kaiako (teachers) should also prioritise whānau aspirations and desires in the daily decision making for their children. Chan and Ritchie (2016) found that this sense of belonging can be missing for some families who are not of the dominant culture, especially since there can be a tendency for early childhood teachers to rely on Western patterns of whānau engagement and communications. They argue that it is only when teachers build strong relationships with whānau and embrace culturally responsive pedagogies that are contextually responsive to the children and whānau in their settings that all parties can work together towards their shared aspirations and sense of belonging in the setting. In this context, the things of home, the family’s treasures and artefacts and the children’s toys, loveys and their associated relationships, could be key cultural tools to bridge the various settings, homes and sense of belonging.

Connecting the Dolls with Stories of Belonging And so, turning once again to my thinking about bell hooks and her return home to Kentucky to find a spiritual peace, I realised it was this spiritual peace that I was feeling as I unwrapped and welcomed into this new residence my childhood mementos as cultural tools. bell hooks, quoting Scott Russell Sanders, says that in “connecting homeplace to a spiritual peace, [Scott] reminds us that ‘in belonging to a landscape, one feels a rightness, at-homeness, a knitting of self and world’ ” (68). I felt that rightness, that at-homeness. As I was unpacking these dolls and toys, I was feeling a knitting of myself into this new landscape, the beginnings of a feeling of completeness. Once again, I was perplexed as I thought about how old dolls and toys could be creating this feeling. Then, I realised. It was not the dolls and toys. They are instead the cultural tools, artefacts and placeholders for the stories about my relationships to my people and places where I belong and feel at home (Fig. 2):

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Fig. 2  Dolls and Toys as links to narratives of relationships and belonging. (Note. Personal photographs from family albums and more recently in new home) The gift from my father’s great-aunt, brought from Czechoslovakia (as it was known at that time) at the request of my great-grandfather Wimmer. This doll tells me the stories about generations of my family in what seemed to be a very far-away country. When I look at this doll, I hear again the stories my grandfather would tell of his family, his experiences, the way of life in this mystical-to-me “old country”. Dolls with their stories that connect me to my mother, her sister and thus my cousin. My mother and her sister didn’t have much growing up moving from place to place to place and then again. As adults, each Christmas they would buy each other’s daughter a special doll and ship it across the country to delight not only my cousin and me, but themselves as well, judging from my mother’s delighted expressions each time. My mother’s stories of her challenging

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younger life juxtaposed with the always-present love, continue to challenge me to look beyond the obvious of children’s circumstances to better understand their unique stories. My Raggedy-Ann that accompanied me from crib, to preschool, to college, to married life and motherhood, dutifully listening to all my thoughts, secrets, and stories. A few years ago my new puppy found Raggedy-Ann and thought it was a toy to tear and toss. When I pulled Raggedy-Ann from the terrier teeth to find her head and face badly damaged, I sobbed (and I tear-up now). She has to be fixed (still). I remember reprimands from care-givers as I would whisper to Raggedy-Ann as I lay in my nap-cot at childcare. At home during bedtime, I would read/tell her the stories and she would tell me how what she would do if she was in the story (I had a bit of an imagination). She holds so many of my stories and has helped me become who I am. My sons’ loveys that include a Clowny so important that in the middle of my trans-Pacific move I received a message from one of these now-adult sons that simply stated, “You have Clowny still…..RIGHT?” When this son was young, he had troubles with asthma and breathing. Clowny would sit with him through all his treatments and every night in bed. During these quiet times we would cuddle on the sofa as my son would rub on Clowny’s velour hands and feet to the point of wearing a hole in the fabric. During a visit, my mother saw these emerging holes and patched Clowny to make him last. Thus, Clowny is also a strong connection to my own mother as is the other son’s Yellow-blankie, made by mother. This blanket is kept in the display cabinet with the similarly frequently rubbed, and son-described “dirty corner” clearly visible. Not so much loveys as ironic reminders, are the frilly, girly dolls gifted to my daughter by my mother and mother-in-law. They are reminders that personal identity can persevere even when loved ones see you differently than you are. When I see these loveys (and not-so-loveys), I’m transported to the time when my children were young, I was exhausted, and we were all together (unlike the recent times of the pandemic).

These dolls and their stories have made me feel like I belong. I belong to the people in these stories. I belong in the places where these stories come from and where these people were. I belong to and with these things. It is through these stories that I am tracing myself back through my genealogy to the people and the soils of my source of life then weaving these stories into this new geographic home as I build more stories, knitting and weaving back and forth. I am welcoming myself to belong to my past, present and future home. As an adult, I am unwrapping and placing these artefacts of childhood and their stories into this new residence, this

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new community, this new country. I am finding a home-place for the stories of my people, places and things to belong. When young children have their scraps of blankets, their bears and dolls, we often tolerate them as temporary crutches. It is expected that by a certain age, the children will outgrow these special friends and leave them behind in some box, corner of a closet or lost forever at some rest stop on the highway. These childhood artefacts have been viewed throughout psychological literature since the mid-twentieth century as transitional objects, treasured possessions and attachment objects. The object provides some kind of comfort for children whether it be through the tactile sensory aspects or as an object connecting the child to a secure attachment figure or the environment of home. It is assumed in this literature that there will be some sort of developmental change (Yamaguchi & Moreguchi, 2020) and by some age, towards the end of the early childhood years, children will move away from these objects of home and forget about them. Instead, perhaps these objects are connecting more deeply and broadly to the child’s people, places and things in their past, present and future. Thinking about these objects differently, as artefacts of children’s many, varied, connecting stories of relationships and belonging across time, provokes opportunities for further theorising, much of which I have only begun to touch upon here and in my continued thinking. Some of the questions provoking this further thinking include: Does an object’s status as a narrative artefact of home mean that children must grow away from home? What does this mean for children who do not have personal objects (for the many potential reasons as discussed previously)? Does this necessarily imply an absence and if so, how does attachment and wellbeing play out in these absences? Or might these children have other artefacts or non-physical entities that provide these connections and sense of belonging? What other non-human relationships in children’s lives might provide these links to a sense of belonging in similar (or very different) ways, and to what childhood narratives might they connect? A te ao Māori perspective would have children returning to the source of their nurturance, their ukāipo, to reconnect with their home and their sense of belonging in the world. Perhaps by forcing children to or assuming they will give up these narrative artefacts of home, we are forcing some “bitter milk” upon the child so that they must assert their own independence and self (Grumet, 1988). In doing so, where then do they find their sense of belonging—their sense of home—in new environments? How are they

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holding onto their stories connecting them to where they belong, to their people, places and things from past, present and future, connecting them to their source of life and their spiritual peace, their at-rightness, their home? When I see and think of children carrying their own loveys, whatever form they may take, I wonder what stories they are carrying for the children. I wonder if anyone asks the children about these stories. Some stories may not be for others to hear and, as with my Raggedy Ann, are the private narratives to a trusted companion, empowering the child to explore their place and identities in the world. Other stories may be waiting for an audience, waiting for someone to welcome that child, their experiences, their whānau, their friends, their identities into this setting so that the child can knit themselves into this new landscape and to feel that sense of belonging, “a rightness, at-homeness, a knitting of self and world” (Sanders, in hooks: 68).

Epilogue #1: In Memorial As I return to this writing at the beginning of 2022, my heart is heavy. In December 2021 Gloria Jean Watkins (bell hooks) passed away. I want to acknowledge the impact that she has had not only on my own professional and personal self but to also acknowledge the impact of who she is, was and will live on being through her insights recorded in words. In Belonging: A Culture of Place (2009), she writes about choosing a place to die. When writing about Kentucky she states, I am comforted by the knowledge that I could die here. The is the way I imagine ‘the end:’ I close my eyes and see hands holding a Chinese red lacquer bowl, walking to the top of the Kentucky hill I call my own, scattering my remains as though they are seeds and not ash, a burnt offering on solid ground vulnerable to the wind and rain – all that is left of my body gone, my being shifted, passed away, moving forward on and into eternity. I imagine this farewell scene and it solaces me; Kentucky hills were where my life began. (6)

Her physical body did indeed pass away in Kentucky. However, she scattered her seeds-not ash long before her death as her insights, words and many works have been offerings of deep reflection, provocation and

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transformative, transgressive teaching for change. Thank you, Gloria Jean Watkins, bell hooks.

Epilogue #2: New Beginnings Yet there are also new beginnings, which I have come to realise are still part of this autoethnographic journey. We are expecting our first grandchild who will be born and live far away from where we live. My knitting needles and I immediately set to work. First to be created is a blanket for cuddling and feeling a grandmother’s warm hugs from afar. Next to be created are a small stuffed dragon and a slightly larger stuffed octopus, just perfect for small then larger hands to carry. It is hoped that these new artefacts create a tangible link in the relationship to be developed with this wee loved one and for the wee loved one to know that they belong in my heart and in my home (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3  This Grandmother’s offered hand-knitted lovey to her grandchild

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Notes 1. I have chosen to privilege to local, indigenous name for my new country of residence alongside its Western name. Aotearoa is the name for the North Island and Te Waipounamu is the name of the South Island. As my new home is physically located in Te Waipounamu it is particularly important that it is included alongside the more usual Aotearoa New Zealand. 2. While space here does not allow for a full description of Te Whar̄ iki: He Whāriki Mātauranga mō ngā Mokopuna o Aotearoa Early Childhood Curriculum (Ministry of Education, 2017), it may be helpful for the reader to know that this document is a holistic curriculum framework prioritising mana enhancing perspectives of children’s learning. There are four underpinning principles which are the foundation for and are to guide all pedagogical decision making. These are Empowerment | Whakamana; Holistic Development | Kotahitanga; Family and Community | Whānau Tangata; Relationships | Ngā Hononga. There are then five strands which describe the environmental characteristics, pedagogies, and potential child learning outcomes that are deemed as conducive for fostering and enhancing related learning dispositions. These five strands are Wellbeing | Mana Atua; Belonging | Mana Whenua; Contribution | Mana Tangata; Communication | Mana Reo; Exploraton | Mana Aotūroa. It is important to note that the bilingual titles are not translations but rather are cultural concepts that are closely related to each other. For further information see Gunn & Nuttall, 2019 or https://tewhariki.tki.org.nz 3. At the time of this writing, millions of Ukrainian children, women, and those unable to stay and fight are fleeing their homes. This is deservedly receiving a great deal of press and international attention. The images are devastatingly heart-breaking. Yet these children and their families are not alone. As the statistics provided attest, too many children have been forced from their homes, often with nothing more than the clothes they wear and perhaps what can fit in a small backpack. Yet the children have their narratives of their relationships still. I wonder what will help them hold onto these and new narratives to help them feel they belong, somewhere.

References Barlow, C. (1991). Tikanga whakaaro: Key concepts in Māori culture. Oxford University Press. Boulton, A., Allport, T., Kaiwai, H., Potaka Osborne, G., & Harker, R. (2021). E hoki mai nei ki te ūkaipō—Return to your place of spiritual and physical nourishment. Genealogy, 5(2), 45.

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Chan, A., & Ritchie, J. (2016). Parents, participation, partnership: Problematising New Zealand early childhood education. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 17(3), 289–303. https://doi.org/10.1177/145394911660954 Clandinin, D.  J., & Connelly, F.  M. (2000). Narrative inquiry: Experience and story in qualitative research. Jossey-Bass. Dewey, J. (1969). Experience and education. Collier-Macmillan. Ellis, C., Adams, T. E., & Bochner, A. P. (2011). Autoethnography: An overview. Historical Social Research/Historische Sozialforschung, 36(4), 270–290. Grumet, M. (1988). Bitter milk: Women and teaching. University of Massachusetts Press. Gunn, A., & Nuttall, J. (2019). Weaving Te Whāriki; Aotearoa New Zealand’s early childhood curriculum document in theory and practice (3rd ed.). NZCER Press. hooks, b. (2009). Belonging: A culture of place. Routledge. Mead, H. M. (1993). Tikanga Māori: Living by Māori values. Huia. Ministry of Education. (2017). Te whāriki: He whāriki mātauranga o ngā mokopuna o Aotearoa early childhood curriculum. Author. Pere, R. (1997). Te wheke: Celebration of infinite wisdom. Ao Ake. Self, H., & Self, M. (1987). Growing up in Indian territory. Ag Press. UNICEF. (2022, June). Child displacement. https://data.unicef.org/topic/ child-­migration-­and-­displacement/displacement/ Yamaguchi, M., & Moriguchi, Y. (2020). Developmental change in attachment objects during childhood. Early Child Development and Care, 192, 1119. https://doi.org/10.1080/03004430.2020.1841756

Heart(h)less: Negative Visibility and Positive Invisibility: An Irish Travellers’ Tale Colette Murray

Where we belong and our connection to home and place is important to all of us. Having a sense of place is a deeply human and personal need. When talking about home and place, it is impossible not to acknowledge the political, economic, and social challenges for people experiencing marginalization in Irish society and globally. This chapter focuses on both the personal and political dimensions of home and place. It is the account of four Traveller women elders and one young man who have scripted their own story about what home means to them. While there is a danger in looking back at the past with a nostalgic lens and simply reminiscing, in writing this chapter, I am endeavouring to connect with and think critically Colette would like to acknowledge the contribution of Missie Collins, Molly Collins, Mary Collins, Bridgy Collins and one young man without you this chapter would not have been possible. C. Murray (*) Department of Social Science, Law, and Education, Technological University Dublin, Dublin, Ireland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Gibbons et al. (eds.), Home in Early Childhood Care and Education, Critical Cultural Studies of Childhood, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43695-6_9

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about the past, the present, and implications for the future. The past is a resource that serves as a memory to sustain, understand, and build the future (hooks, 2009). I was compelled to talk with the Travellers about their conceptualization of home because of the lack of political leadership and the anti-­ Traveller racism which continues to find expression in blocking Travellers’ access to appropriate accommodation in Ireland. My interest was also ignited by the recognition that Traveller children born in the last decade have never had the opportunity to experience nomadism—a core part of Travellers’ traditional way of life. I am also concerned about the lack of accurate and real information about Travellers’ way of life available to early childhood educators. This chapter shares stories originally presented as a video. The purpose of the project was to shed light on their individual and collective experiences of home, remembering the past, the lived reality of the present and a visioning of the future. It is a story of survival, resilience, resistance, love, care, and strength of four Traveller women elders and one young man. Their memories and histories are instructive as knowledge holders and are shaped by their cultural inheritance; an inheritance which is often in conflict with Eurocentric/western ways of seeing and being in the world. This chapter outlines who Irish Travellers are, the nomadic context, and how the project was undertaken, before sharing the Traveller voices. Their story of home and place preserves a memory of past life, culture, and resistance and at the same time identifies the losses and challenges for the future. Amplifying their voices is an opportunity to move away from the assumptions and myths within the dominant discourse. Their stories provide a rich insight into their history and the reality for Traveller families. To provide diversity-informed early childhood education and care (ECEC) services, an important step to begin is to deepen our self-­ awareness and examine our own assumptions about diversity—including our assumptions about the Traveller community (Murray, 2012a) Building a knowledge base about how systems of oppression work and how to implement anti-racist and anti-bias practice benefits all children. For those working in ECEC, critically engaging with the misrepresentation of Travellers is an essential step in creating equitable pedagogical curricula for both Traveller and majority children. This chapter presents the voices of Travellers with the intention of building stronger social justice approaches to diversity in ECEC (Derman-Sparks et  al., 2020; Murray, 2020).

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Who Are Irish Traveller/Mincéir? Irish Travellers/Mincéir are a small indigenous ethnic community (40,000), less than 1% of the national population. The name Traveller is most commonly used by Travellers, but Mincéir is being used more recently by some members of the community. Mincéir means Traveller in the Traveller language Cant, Gammon or Shelta. In the community, 60% of Travellers are under the age of 25 compared with 33.4% of the general population (Central Statistics Office, 2016). Travellers are traditionally nomadic and distinct from the majority or settled community. According to Mac Laughlin (1995) the first mention of Travellers appears in the fifth century where they were referred to as “whitesmiths” due to their associated with tin-smithing (Joyce, 2018: 43). Travellers have a long shared and largely unrecorded history. They have common cultural characteristics and traditions evident in the organization of family, values, language, and social and economic life (2012). The culture and traditions of Travellers are rooted in an oral tradition where stories, songs, poems, prayers, and histories are passed down from one generation to the next (Ó hAodha, 2020). Kenny and Binchy (2009: 123) argue that Travellers “inhabit two worlds, the hostile settled world and their own Traveller world”. This hostility is evidenced in the documented experiences of marginalization, oppression, racism and disrespect (Fundamental Rights Agency, 2020a, b; Hammarberg, 2012; Mc Ginnity et  al., 2017; Murray, 2012b). The extended family is the embodiment of community for Travellers, and not a specific geographical location. In the past decade, the Traveller nomadic lifestyle has been constrained through Irish legislation Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2002 (Trespass Law) (Houses of the Oireachtas, 2002). This law, since its enactment, has had major implications for Travellers’ lifestyle and wellbeing. The living conditions are having an undeniable impact on Traveller children’s well-being and mental health (Ombudsman for Children (OCO), 2021). Significantly, the suicide rate for Traveller is seven times that of the settled population. Over 65% of Traveller suicides occur among those aged under 30, which means 11% of Travellers are losing their lives in this way (Rorke, 2023; Ward, 2022).

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Travellers and Nomadism Irish Traveller lifestyle and cultural attributes are based on a nomadic tradition. This sets Travellers apart from the sedentary or dominant Irish population. The Traveller community, while Irish, have lived separately from the settled (non-Traveller) community for centuries. This separation has been supported with evidence from the first genome study of Travellers by Gilbert et al. (2017) which indicated that Traveller divergence from the dominant population began approximately 360  years (or 12 generations) ago. Travellers’ ways of knowing and nomadism have been negated and perceived as a threat by the dominant community and the state. The history of fear and prejudice towards Travellers, along with a perception of them as dangerous other and non-conforming troublemakers who push back at the majority population, has been embedded in the dominant discourse for decades (Coxhead, 2007; Joyce, 2018; McDonagh, 1994; Mac Greil, 2011; McVeigh, 1999; Ó hAodha, 2006, 2020; Okely, 1983). The right to nomadism or appropriate accommodation for the Irish Traveller community is contested at every level of Irish society—it is political. The Traveller narrative is important and necessary to counter and review the historic and ideological dominant discourse on Traveller sense-making and the right to how one lives a life. The connection to place historically for the majority Irish is linked to private property and land ownership. Laird (2019: para 9) argues that: “the truism that Irish people are predisposed to being particularly obsessed with owning property and land needs to be challenged as it is not only false but exclusory, creating prejudice against those who don’t own property and land”. This predisposition for property has consequences for Irish Travellers who have been pathologized both by the dominant community and by the State in Ireland, and elsewhere, for their nomadism and non-­ ownership of place and space. Traveller nomadism has been further criminalized in Ireland since 2014 through the revised Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2002 (Houses of the Oireachtas, 2002) legislation, which means Travellers can no longer be nomadic. This legislation has pushed Travellers into intolerable accommodation conditions with on-going detrimental effects on the mental health of the community (Murray, 2020; Ward, 2022). In 2021 the Ombudsman for Children’s Office published its report No End in  Site: An Investigation into the Living Conditions of Children Living on a Local Authority Halting Site (OCO, 2021). The

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report outlined the conditions of 66 Traveller children and their families living on a halting site1in the South of Ireland. The investigation found there was “a failure to consider the best interests of children, including those with additional needs, and to ensure that children living on the site enjoy a safe, suitable standard of accommodation” (8). One 12-year-old stated that “it’s like an abandoned place that people forgot about, it’s like we’re forgotten, we feel like garbage” (5). The criminalization of nomadism is the cornerstone of anti-Traveller racism in a country that has been colonized and where the connection to place is linked to private property. There is little understanding of nomadism that is embedded in Traveller mindset, where sense making is connected to identity, kinship, and being together in extended family (Liégeois, 1994, 2008; O’Connell, 1994). It is not “just” about travelling or moving about, as explained by Michael McDonagh (1994: 98) in Ó hAodha (2006): Country (settled, dominant community) people organize every aspect of their lives…on the fact of sedentarism, the fact that they lie permanently side by side with a fixed group of people. Travellers… organize every aspect of their lives around family ties…. The Traveller’s very identity requires ‘keeping in touch’ and this in turn requires travel’.

So how is nomadism connected to the concept of home for Travellers? As already stated, Traveller norms and social values and mental constructs are opposite to the ideological framing of home in the dominant discourse. But there are further challenges in today’s world. The concept of home has been degraded globally (the pandemic of homelessness, the loss of a homeland and a home and people living in unsettled spaces of transition). It is becoming clear that there is a growing non-recognition of home as a sacred place for all citizens. Uncertainty is becoming the norm for many and has been created by those in power at political, economic, and social levels, which is contributing to the reconceptualizing of home for many. This challenge is not new to Travellers as can be seen in the words of Ewan McColl in his 1964 song Moving On: “so move along, get along, move along, get along, go, move, shift” (McColl, 1964). McColl’s song remains relevant today—except today there is now nowhere to go, and the focus on Traveller accommodation is diminished further within global demands. This situation has affected the lives of Travellers in a myriad of ways, their relationship with home and their sense of belonging, their identity, their

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health and mental health, and their hope. In line with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC, 1989) and Ombudsman for Children, 2021, Traveller children are entitled to protection against all forms of discrimination, including supports to ensure their survival and development to the maximum extent possible, and respect for the preservation of their Traveller identity and enjoyment of their culture.

Photographs as Method I have known the Traveller women who participated in this project for over 30 years. The young man who asked to join our project was new to me and very welcome. The process of storytelling was comfortable and familiar and a legitimate and important source of data (Brayboy, 2006; D’Arcy, 2016). While I am bringing their voices to paper and offering context, their stories are the heart of this dialogic process. My interest in talking to the Travellers about their conceptualization of home was driven by the lack of leadership in providing appropriate accommodation for Travellers, and the recognition that Traveller children are living in overcrowded conditions and are being denied the opportunity to experience nomadism. They are losing an essential part of their Traveller identity and their tradition. In Ireland local authorities have responsibility of providing and refurbishing Traveller specific accommodation. This includes halting sites and group housing for Travellers. In 2021 the Irish Human Rights Commission gathered information from local authorities to review the underspend of their allocated budgets for Traveller specific accommodation between 2008 and 2018. Local authorities drew down just two-thirds of the funds available to them, which amounts to €58.2 million underspend over the course of a decade. The review concluded that most councils had failed to properly analyse or gather data on the needs of Travellers (Irish Human Rights Commission, 2021). I worked in Pavee Point Traveller and Roma Center 2 for 13 years, and I am a current board member. I requested permission to meet with the women for the purposes of developing a video on their conceptualization of home. The programme coordinator for the health project where the women are employed asked the women if they were interested in participating. They were interested and agreed to a meeting. The young man, who joined the group, was also interested in participating when he heard what we were going to be discussing. All the participants gave written consent for their involvement.

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To begin the process, I sourced a series of photographs from Derek Speirs, a professional photographer, who has worked for Pavee Point for decades documenting Traveller life and events. I laid out the photographs on the table and began a conversation as the women looked at the images and began to speak. It was a very informal engagement. The full conversation was recorded and transcribed. The aim was to produce a short video with participant voices over the photos which were there on the day. While the conversation was wide ranging, some key themes served as the basis of the video and chapter. A student of media studies from the Technological University Dublin (formerly the Institute of Technology Blanchardstown) Emmet McDonnell, supported me to develop the video. The women viewed the video and were happy with the final piece. As a settled Irish woman and educator, I recognize my positionality and my responsibility, in balance with my place as ally, while standing with Travellers to present their voice accurately and authentically. My hope is that these Traveller voices will offer insight for early childhood educators and provide them with an impetus to reflect on Travellers as human beings with hearts, concerns and hopes for their community; to challenge their own assumptions; and to create positive pedagogical moments for Traveller children in their care. My sincere thanks to the Traveller women and the young man who participated in the project. It is my hope that in amplifying their story they will inspire you, the reader, to think about your assumptions and empower you to always look for the alternative story to the one often portrayed in the dominant discourse.

Traveller/Mincéir Memory, Knowledge, and Future Hopes The discussion on home began by looking at the photographs which were spread out on the table. The women spent time enjoying identifying people and places, sharing experiences and connections. After some time, we moved on to talking about what home meant to them using the photographs as a stimulus. The photographs triggered memories of life on the road, challenges then and now, changes including loss and benefits, and hopes for the future. Eight main themes came to the fore during the course of the conversations:

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. Home is family and safety; 1 2. Home as a nomadic memory; 3. Home is where your heart is; 4. Home is faith; 5. Home is destitution and abandonment; 6. Home is recognition; 7. Home is change; and 8. Home is the future. Below I share excerpts from the discussion that relate to these themes. Each photograph is accompanied by a quote, or several quotes chosen from each discussion. The conversation was free flowing and relaxed. I have added some notes for context and clarification for the reader.

Home Is Family and Safety This first picture captures the end of a pilgrimage with everyone gathering around the bonfire. Travellers have always used outdoor fires to come together outside their tents and trailers for warmth, cooking and socializing including sharing stories and songs.

Gathering around the fire following a pilgrimage

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This one here just reminds me of home, the fire, like it’s warm you feel safe. For me going home, even say to me Mother’s home or to one of my sister’s homes. You feel safe because we’re all family. Travellers live in official and unofficial halting sites with limited facilities (access to water, sanitation, electricity), as well as group housing and housing within the settled communities. In more recent years though many Travellers are increasingly being made homeless (Pavee Point, 2021). The state provides emergency accommodation, if available, which can include bed and breakfast or hotel accommodation. Homelessness has been exacerbated by the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2002 (Houses of the Oireachtas, 2002) and overcrowding. The next two images (below) are of an unofficial halting site and a Travellers’ trailer and jeep. Many Travellers are living amongst the settled community now and the women lament the move to assimilate Travellers and discuss concerns they have about the community’s mental health.

(a) Unofficial halting site. (b) Nomadism

I think this one here as well, you know, the light on the windi (window). If you’re outside and you’re looking in on the trailer site. I think that’s where Travellers are kinda missing out. Now we’re all back in houses and like I know you have the comforts of the houses…but when we go out and do our fieldwork (primary health care worker), we’d have young couples and auld couples that’s in houses. We know an auld woman that’s out there now, in a house… and they don’t feel well, but she said when they were on a site… there was still just a different feeling there. Looking out through the windi (on the site) she said and seeing people made you feel better. This one reminds me of years ago like when we used to go travelling. We’d always have maybe a van or a trailer like that and you’d have a tent as well

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so we’d go around to Cork and Limerick and it was lovely. It was something you know…you feel excited when you get there in summer time and all the other Travellers, you would be just living more or less in a field and you still managed .

Home Is a Nomadic Memory Travellers practised nomadism for economic and social reasons. The Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2014 has criminalized Travellers travelling. If they park on the side of the road, their trailer can be removed, and they are then required to pay 3000 euro to retrieve it. Consequently, Travellers are not travelling as the effects of the law means there are fewer places to stop and park up (Community Foundation in Ireland, 2017; Pavee Point, 2018). The following images depict what was once a common sight on Irish roads where Travellers parked for short or extended periods of time. In the past horse-drawn wagons were used which were later replaced by trailers/caravans. Here the conversation centres around reminiscing about their loss of a way of life and challenges of being separated and isolated in local authority housing.

(a) Travellers parking on the side of the road. (b) Traditional barrel top wagon

This one here reminds me of years ago when we used to go travelling. Sometimes when we’d go travelling, we’d sleep in a tent. But I’d often looked out in the evening then, we’d be in bed and you’d look out and you’d see the fire still lighting, it was real homely. It’s just family and warmth and light and knowing everybody is kind of safe. I just find the houses are blocking everyone away.

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It was so cold in a tent, and you had to go and gather your sticks and your water and whatever. But if you had a wagon, you had a nice little home. Comfortable. Figure a, b below show mixed local authority housing and an official halting site for Travellers.

(a) Local authority housing. (b) Official halting site for Travellers

To me, the houses and moving into other (settled) communities for Travellers is after putting so much on their mental health. So, you have this house and you’ve it all done up but they’re not happy. They’re still hungry for something. There’s a friend of mine, fifteen years she says I spent in a house, and she couldn’t see no one, and it could be a week again (before) you’d even see one of your own. She says, it left me sick, it made me sick. But I’m here now (on a site) she says and it’s not much but the fire is lighting. I’m looking out there at the children playing and I know my sisters, brothers and they’re all running up and down with the children. She said it’s like a healing for me she says. Now in the evening the boys go out and light the fire and the women will come out as well to have the craic (fun) she says for an hour or so. I think for Travellers the worst thing …that could have happened to them….it is the Trespass Act (Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2002) that’s stopping people from travelling. I think we’ve lost a lot of our culture….so I’d love to see some of it coming back. Even if they gave Travellers even eight weeks that you can travel or go to camps. So even if it was four-five weeks that the small children would be allowed that. You brought them away and they saw what they used to do. I think young people are losing so much of their culture.

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Home Is Where Your Heart Is The Traveller communities family structure is based on the extended family system. Traditionally Traveller would live near or with their extended family. This strong connection and emotion was evident in the discussion of family, being together, caring for one another and passing down knowledge and supports for child rearing. There was mixed views on living in trailers and houses. There is recognition that things have changed, living in community is more challenging and today many Travellers are living in often isolated spaces amongst the settled community.

(a) Home is where your heart is, photo 1. (b) Home is where your heart is photo 2

Home is where your heart is, and it is where you have your family around you and everything half right and a bit of food on your table. So, to me, it is the family, like all the children around you and being happy and peaceful and knowing that everyone else is the one way like. Home to me is a place. Like for Travellers, they have so many homes. It’s a place to camp and places where they live. Like no matter where it is, even if it is in a car or say there were in a caravan or in a site it is home.

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Traveller family

The extended family would be very important. I always had my granny or my aunts and they were there. Where I’m living myself now, I have nearly all my family around me. I would be seen as very important.

Traveller group housing

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Now, I wouldn’t like to live on a site in a trailer. “Home” well I wouldn’t leave my home for the world, with the heat and electric and the toilet. What we never had on the road or on a site either. So, I don’t know. I would feel more comfortable in a trailer. Like when my father and mother moved from the trailer, everyone started moving. So, the family just went with them, you know.

Community connection

The move to apartments or housing outside the community has also raised challenges for staying in touch with family, seeing one another, communication, and togetherness: The house groupings is that Travellers are there for each other. Right, but to put a family into the settled community, they don’t want to be there or into apartments, because they have children and there is no freedom for the children is one and the other part of it is that the older generation of Travellers keep an eye to the children. But I think that these days, the only way to speak to the majority of Travellers in the family, nowadays, is like social media, like Facebook and all, but it’s not the same. Back then they had nothin(g) and they looked happy. Do you know what I mean?

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Home Is Faith Religion has played a central part in many Travellers’ lives. The majority of Travellers come from a Roman Catholic tradition and have a strong belief in the power of prayer, religious icons, and holy water. Travellers believe in healing remedies; they visit holy wells and healers, and use oils and ointments and cures to treat aliements. In the following discussion, the women provide examples of these practice.

(a) Religion and faith, photo 1. (b) Holy statue, photo 2

The Traveller believes very much in holy water, so, throwing the holy water, say around home or their tent or caravan, is very protecting to them. You know, we have our statues, and we have special, you know they are very special to us. We have Our Lady of Medjugorje in my window and the divine Mercy and I have to come out every morning and talk and pray to them statues.

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I have the Divine Mercy here, and I come out every morning, I am up at half 5, and I put on the kettle. We get mass here in Gardiner Street (on their way to work), every morning we come in here at half past eight. We would have our own priests.

(a) Holy statue in official halting site photo 1. (b) Holy well, photo 2

Although the younger generation are not practising in the same way, there is still a strong belief in cures. There are also signs of active recording and revitalizing of some of the cures from Travellers beyond folklore (Ahlstrom, 2017; Galway Travellers Support Group, 2002). Our young generation, they would have faith, even though they mightn’t go to mass now, some of them, they mightn’t go to mass. But don’t you worry, if one of them childer (children) belonging to them gets sick. “Mammy, will you ring such a Priest now and tell them”, you know. If there somebody is our community that’s sick. Well, the whole community, we’ll spread that, and everyone will pray for them. Get masses said, so that’s very powerful. So, I have a little holy water font at the back door and no matter which of them comes in, they will put their finger in that. For {the young man} when he came in here…he was ruined with psoriasis but my Mother held him up (stopped him) one day and it was all on his hands and everything. So, she said “{Young man}, did you ever go up for a cure” and he said, “no-one told me where it was in Edenderry”. So, he came with me and {my son} one day….there was a man who my Mother knew from Edenderry for years, she believed in him very much and he cured him and it never came back.

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Home Is Destitution and Abandonment Ó hAodha argues that Travellers have been portrayed as the quintessential “outsiders” in Irish society and also a projective mechanism for the hates and fears of the settled community (2020). The community has been stigmatized and racialized within the general public mentality. Not unlike other indigenous communities, Travellers experience marginalization and exclusion at all levels of society. Government accommodation policy demonstrates that assimilation and settlement of Travellers has been a priority. The results have left many families isolated or living in overcrowded conditions. Structural racism manifests in detrimental consequences for the community in terms of mental health and addiction. For some young Travellers there is a loss of identity and lack of hope. The fears for the young people in the community were evident from all voices. Frustration with the lack of action from authorities to address the drugs crisis and lack of appropriate accommodation within the community was evident in the discussion. There was also a recognition that the loss of traditions and culture was a contributary factor in mental health issues arising in the community.

(a) Official halting site, photo 1. (b) Unofficial halting site, photo 2

(c) Challenges for young people, photo 3

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In sites…, there’s drugs in them and they are trying to keep their children from drugs and there is a lot of drugs in the Travellers now. I’m surprised at the Guards, they have helicopters, they have horses. They have everything in the Guards now. They have every Traveller in Ireland in nest eggs, like a nest egg in sites and in houses, so they know where they are, and yet they’re not able to come and get the drugs in them sites. Do you understand? When you listen to the news there is never mention what they will do for Travellers. I think they (young people) are hungry for something. The young people now is just hanging around. I won’t curse over the drugs, but the drugs, it’s just after taking a toll on the mental health. So, that’s what I think is causing the biggest majority of Travellers getting depressed. Because they miss everything, they miss everyone and the old ways, do you know what I mean?

Cultural heritage: Michael McDonagh (RIP, 2021), custodian of Traveller history and culture

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Home Is Recognition Following years of lobbying by Traveller representative organization, the Traveller community were formally recognized as a minority ethnic group on 1 March 2017. Pressure from the European Union and the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission contributed to this historic recognition (Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, 2021). While acknowledged as a major step for Travellers, this recognition came with a proviso that Traveller ethnicity would not create any “new individual, constitutional or financial rights” (Kenny. Dáil Éireann [Irish Parliament] 2017). As such, Travellers have no legal right to resources to address Traveller-specific issues as an ethnic group. While exciting and hopeful for some, the cycle of years of disappointment leaves many Travellers sceptical, as outlined below (Murray, 2020).

Celebrating the recognition of minority ethnic status 2017

I always say even when we were recognized, this year, wasn’t it earlier on this year, when we were recognized as an ethnic group. People says what will it do for us Missie, what will we gain from it. For me, I said, it gave me respect within my heart that they did recognize us as an ethnic group.

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Home Is Change and Hope There are changes in the community both positive and negative in terms of access to services, gender roles, accommodation, and mental health. Many of the changes come at a price and while Travellers hope for change, the question is, how long can you wait, as Travellers live from promise to promise and ongoing disappointments. Education is a right, and while Traveller children continue to experience discrimination in education (Quinlan, 2021), attendance has increased. Children are also engaged in afterschool projects throughout the country where they take opportunities to voice their opinions and develop their confidence and skills. Traveller children are the future and as more Traveller activists become visible as role models there is opportunity in the future.

(a) Moving forward, photo 1. (b) The role of Traveller men, photo 2

There will be further steps up along the line and I hope to see changes. I have a house, but they are not making enough of houses for the younger generation. I’ve family that wouldn’t go out to the road now. they won’t go back now. I think the Local Authorities or whoever is over it, the County Council or Corporation or whatever, that they need to plan ahead and think about the younger generation coming up, where are they going to live. They are not going to put them on top of our roof where we are living or another estate like ours, or whatever, you know. So, there’s a lot to plan for. There are some things good. I think the Travelling young men now, would take up a role if the women were doing a course. They would make sure the children would be picked up from school and that the children is going to school now. The younger generation are looking for a better education for their families, which is badly needed. What we missed out on we gave it to our children.

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The Future Travellers should be able to enjoy their culture. Traveller child (Eurochild, 2012: 4) You should treat people like you want to be treated yourself. Traveller child (Eurochild, 2012: 4)

Memories of the road: Nomadism entails a way of looking at the world, a different way of perceiving things, a different attitude to accommodation, to work and to life in general. Michael McDonagh (1994, p. 95)

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Taking It Home: Concluding Note This chapter brings attention to Traveller elders and one young man’s stories of their conceptualization of home. It is both a personal and political story. Travellers’ lives are dictated by the conditions they have been forced to live in despite their desire to live in community and be close to the extended family. The challenges of living in unserviced, overcrowded spaces, or isolated local authority housing are putting pressure on Travellers experience of home. The nostalgia of telling stories and their shared history brought about a sense of comfort that rippled throughout the remembering and a sense of longing from the elder women and young Traveller man. History matters, it not only sustains but also impacts on today’s reality and the future. Myths and misinformation about Travellers continue to be prevalent in the dominant discourse. The stories in this chapter counter the essentialist and reductionist constructs of Travellers in Irish society. Taking time to build and appropriate knowledge base and to be guided by Traveller knowledge is important for early childhood educators. These stories are an entry point for embracing, empowering, and creating equitable pedagogical curricula for Travellers and majority children. This requires the settled population and state institutions to actively engage with Traveller parents and Traveller organizations and begin to understand our shared humanity. It requires an openness to unpack the unknown in all its messiness and to unlearn and re-learn. Further, it requires acknowledging the harm done, the hurt caused, face our obligations, and drive equitable and inclusive process for change. There are always alternative stories, and they matter. Heart(h)less focuses on the positive invisibility of Travellers, their human desires, needs and hopes, which counter the negative visibility of Travellers in Ireland, a destructive feature of their reality. This will continue to have a critical effect on the lives of Traveller children and their future. These stories acknowledge a longing and a sadness but also hope for what change can bring. ECEC educators have a role in supporting that hope. Acknowledgements  All photos in this chapter have been reproduced with the courtesy of Derek Speirs and Pavee Point Traveller and Roma Centre. Photographs by Derek Speirs, Figures: 1–18 and 20–25 and Julien Behal, Figure: 19.

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Notes 1. Halting Sites are purpose-built accommodation for trailers (caravans) provided by the local authority. A halting site is laid out in bays and is serviced by the local authority. 2. Pavee Point Traveller and Roma Center: www.paveepoint.ie Pavee Point’s mission is to contribute to improvement in the quality of life, living ­circumstances, status and participation of Travellers & Roma through working innovatively for social justice, greater solidarity, development, equality and human rights.

References Ahlstrom, D. (2017, January 13). Traveller cures could help reduce HSE costs, student finds: Ian McDonagh carries out survey of herbal cures and healers used by Traveller community. Irish Times. https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ science/traveller-­cures-­could-­help-­reduce-­hse-­costs-­student-­finds-­1.2935892 Brayboy, B. (2006). Towards a tribal critical race theory in education. The Urban Review, 37(5). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-­005-­0018-­y Central Statistics Office. (2016). Census 2016 profile 8 – Irish travellers, ethnicity and religion. Central Statistics Office Community Foundation Ireland. (2017). National Traveller survey. https:// www.communityfoundation.ie/insights/news/national-­traveller-­survey-­funded­by-­the-­communityfoundation-­for-­ireland Coxhead, J. (2007). The last bastion of racism: Gypsies, Travellers and policing. Trentham Books. D’Arcy, K. (2016). Using counter-stories to challenge stock stories about Traveller families. Race, Ethnicity and Education, 4(12). https://doi.org/10.108 0/13613324.2016.1191701 Derman-Sparks, L., Olsen Edwards, J., & with Goins, C.  M. (2020). Anti-bias education for young children and ourselves (2nd ed.). National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC). Eurochild. (2012). Giving a voice to European children in vulnerable situations. Eurochild. European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA). (2020a). Roma and Travellers in six countries: Roma and Traveller survey. Publications Office of the EU. European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA). (2020b). Roma and Travellers survey: Europe needs to break the vicious circle of poverty and discrimination against Roma and Travellers. https://fra.europa.eu/en/news/2020/ roma-­and-­travellers-­survey-­europe-­needs-­break-­vicious-­circle-­poverty-­and-­ discrimination

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Galway Traveller Support Group. (2002). Traveller remedies from nature. Galway Traveller Support Group. Gilbert, E., Carmi, S., Ennis, S., Wilson, J.  F., & Cavalleri, G.  L. (2017). Genomic insights into the population structure and history of the Irish Travellers. Scientific Reports, 7, 42187. https://www.nature.com/articles/ srep42187#auth-­Edmund-­Gilbert Hammarberg, T. (2012). Human rights of Roma and Travellers in Europe. Council of Europe. hooks, b. (2009). Belonging: A culture of place. Routledge. Houses of the Oireachtas. (2002). Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2002. https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/bills/bill/2001/64/ Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2002. Perhaps it needs to be reference as Houses of the Oireachtas 2002 Apologies Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission. (2021). Commission accounts of the local authority review on provision of Traveller-specific sccommodation. https:// www.ihrec.ie/our-­work/equality-­review/ Joyce, S. (2018). Mincéir Siúladh: An ethnographic study of young Travellers’ experiences of racism in an Irish city. PhD thesis, unpublished. University of Limerick. Kenny, M., & Binchy, A. (2009). Irish Travellers, identity and the education system. In P. A. Danaher, M. Kenny, & J. R. Leder (Eds.), Traveller, nomadic and migrant education (pp. 117–131). Routledge. Laird, H. (2019). What are the roots of the Irish obsession with property? RTE Brainstorm. https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2019/0321/1037676-­what-­ are-­the-­roots-­of-­the-­irish-­obsession-­with-­property/uiy Liégeois, J. P. (1994). Roma, Gypsies, Travellers. Council of Europe. Liégeois, J. P. (2007). Roma in Europe. Strasbourg: Council of Europe. Liégeois, J. P. (2008). Roma in Europe. Council of Europe. Mac Gréil, M. (2011). Pluralism and diversity in Ireland. Columba Press. Mac Laughlin, J. (1995). Travellers and Ireland: Whose country, whose history? Cork University Press. McColl, E. (1964). Moving on song. [Song]. https://mainlynorfolk.info/ewan. maccoll/songs/movingonsong.html#ewanmaccoll Mc Ginnity, F., Grotti, R., Kenny, O., & Russell, H. (2017). Who experiences discrimination? Evidence from the QNHS equality modules. Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission and Economic and Social Research Institute. McDonagh, M. (1994). Nomadism in Irish Travellers’ identity. In M. McCann, S. Ó. Síocháin, & J.  Ruane (Eds.), Irish Travellers: Culture and ethnicity. Institute of Irish Studies, Queen’s University.

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McVeigh, R. (1999). Theorising sedentarism: The roots of anti-nomadism. In T. Acton (Ed.), Gypsy politics and Traveller identity (pp. 7–25). University of Hartfordshire Press. Murray, C. (2012a). Why working with diversity and equality in early childhood education and care matters. In M. Mhic Mhathúna & M. Taylor (Eds.), Early childhood education and care: An introduction for students in Ireland (pp. 277–290). Gill and MacMillan. Murray, C. (2012b). A minority within a minority? Social justice for Traveller and Roma children in ECCE. European Journal of Education, 47(4), 569–583. Murray, C. (2017). Conscious Noticing: Anti-Bias from Policy to Practice. In Farago, F., Murray, C., & Swadener, B. B. (2017). International Critical Childhood Policy Studies Journal, 6(1), 22–37. Murray, C. (2020). Beyond recognition: Persistent neglect of young Traveller children’s rights in Ireland. In J. Murray, B. B. Swadener, & K. Smith (Eds.), The Routledge international handbook of young children’s rights (pp.  276–290). Routledge. Ó hAodha, M. (2006). Irish Travellers: Representations and realities. Liffey Press. Ó hAodha, M. (2020). Ortha an ghreama: As a lesser-known Irish Traveller narrative: Symbolic inversion and resistance. Study Irlandesi. A Journal of Irish Studies, 10(10), 167–192. https://doi.org/10.13128/SIJIS-­2239-­3978-­1 1759 O’Connell, J. (1994). Ethnicity and Irish Travellers. In S. Ó. Síocháin et al. (Eds.), Irish Travellers: Culture and ethnicity. Institute of Irish Studies, Queen’s University. Okely, J. (1983). The Traveller-gypsies. Cambridge University Press. Ombudsman for Children. (2021). No end in site – An investigation into the living conditions of children living on a local authority halting site. Ombudsman for Children. Pavee Point. (2018). Civil society monitoring report on the implementation of the national Roma integration strategy 11. European Commission. https://cps. ceu.edu/sites/cps.ceu.edu/files/attachment/basicpage/3034/rcm-­c ivil-­ society-­monitoring-­report-­2-­ireland-­2018-­eprint.pdf Pavee Point. (2021, October). The Traveller community and homelessness. Advocacy paper. Pavee Point Traveller and Roma Centre. https://www.paveepoint.ie/ wp-­c ontent/uploads/2015/04/Pavee-­P oint-­Traveller-­H omelessness-­ Advocacy-­Paper-­Oct2021.pdf Quinlan, M. (2021). Out of the shadows. https://www.gov.ie/en/policy-­ information/531ef5-­c o-­o rdination-­o f-­t raveller-­e ducation/#out-­o f-­t he-­ shadows-­traveller-­roma-­education-­voices-­from-­the-­communities-­published-­ november-­2021

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Rorke, B. (2023). Racism the root cause for crisis suicide rate among Travellers in Ireland. European Roma Rights Center (ERRC) retrieved from Center https://eproofing.springer.com/ePb/books/qaeVEpyw7dMYd6mU WP1VgyHCKrvDL9krf6Xolgp7TXE0-KhwIOIgckc6jsQ6zYtf25ldu3NRrxjf GLcfWhyZC97P18kx6DAJkWjBVYJOraTsQLu5ZhXIucq1-c_PyDuZ5 rhfrWnEyuuU4FxoWsPzbgz0CYBmc68SqX004DdaKEM= United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). (1989). https://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/CRC.aspx Ward, A. (2022). Structural racism and the Irish Traveller suicide epidemic. Belfast Leftbloc. https://leftbloc.ie/structural-­racism-­and-­the-­irish-­traveller-­ suicidepidemic/

Vagabonds Efficaces—Effectively Changing the World from a Non-space Mathias Urban

Rising Discontent Despite persistent attempts at rendering it invisible or non-existent, critical, reconceptualist scholarship has become an intellectual home for many. The international Reconceptualizing Early Childhood Education (RECE) conferences have become its physical manifestation, annual get-togethers of a diverse, steadily growing, global community of scholars, practitioners, and activists. We—I include myself in this community—have created a space for critical debate, mutual support and encouragement, creative experimentation, and methodological and theoretical border crossings. In 2021, we celebrated the 30th anniversary of RECE.  This is quite an achievement considering the anti-establishment roots of a grouping that we tend to refer to, only half-jokingly, as a non-organisation. While RECE has indeed become more of an organisation in recent years—with agreed and transparent roles and protocols, a charter a website,1 and other

M. Urban (*) Institute of Education, Dublin City University, Dublin, Ireland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Gibbons et al. (eds.), Home in Early Childhood Care and Education, Critical Cultural Studies of Childhood, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43695-6_10

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elements of a functioning and sustainable entity—the very essence of RECE (its spirit or soul) still comes from its anarchic roots. I have been thinking for some time about the type of intellectual home we have created, and the implications for our engagement as critical scholars with the forces, vested interests, established bodies of knowledge, policies and politics that continue to impact the lives of young children, their communities, and their educators. A narrow reading of a specific, western-based developmental psychology (Burman, 2008) continues to provide scientific justification to developmentalist education and care practices. Arguing against such practices—that tend to disregard diversity and impose developmentally appropriate educational practices (DAP)—connects reconceptualist scholarship today, with its roots in the resistance to DAP three decades ago. However, other arguments and struggles have entered the field. They include, among others, the rise of privatisation and profiteering (Ball, 2007; Junemann & Olmedo, 2019; Macpherson et al., 2014; Neuwelt-­ Kearns & Ritchie, 2020; Ridge & Kippels, 2019) and of large-scale standardised testing of young children (Auld et al., 2019; Kaurel, 2020; Moss & Urban, 2017, 2018, 2020, 2021; Sjøberg, 2019; Urban et al., 2022; Urban & Swadener, 2016). At global scale, a picture of neocolonial, neo-­ liberal educational imperialism prevails (Auld et  al., 2019; Klees et al., 2020). In such contexts, the existing and growing body of critical—reconceptualist, indigenous, anti-colonial—scholarship concerning young children (Bloch et  al., 2014, 2018; Burman, 2008; Cannella et  al., 2016; Carr et al., 2016; Miller, 2012; Moss et al., 2016; Moss & Urban, 2017, 2018) remains marginalised as influential actors, and knowledge brokers (Seitzer et  al., 2023: 1) like the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) or the World Bank refuse to acknowledge its existence, let alone engage with its arguments. This should be a matter of concern for the global community of critical early childhood scholars, as “the World Bank and the OECD are undoubtedly the most influential multilateral organizations when it comes to national education systems” (Seitzer et al., 2023: 4). However, as I discuss in more detail elsewhere, systemic, geo-political, and epistemological tensions are showing in the field (Urban, 2022). One example can be found in a recent analysis by the OECD, published at the tail end of the COVID-19 pandemic:

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Discontent is rising around the world, reflecting dysfunctions and injustices that have emerged in economic, social and political systems. It is also a response to the damage humankind is inflicting on the world’s natural systems and thus, inevitably, upon itself. The COVID-19 pandemic […] has exposed these defects to devastating effect. (OECD, 2021: 9)

Against a backdrop of wide-ranging systems failures, the authors of this analysis see the globally unfolding scenario of mutually reinforcing crises as an opportunity to change course: As countries plan their recovery from the multiple crises triggered by the pandemic, they have an opportunity to make these systems more inclusive, more sustainable, more resilient and more responsive.

However, they conclude, necessary radical reform requires radical action which can only happen with the active participation of citizens in new forms of collective action at the local, national and international level. (OECD, 2021: 9)

To be clear, this analysis comes from the same organisation (albeit a different department) that promotes large-scale standardised testing of five-year olds, the latest addition to its array of International Large-scale Standardised Assessments (ILSAs) as it continues to consolidate its dominance in the global governance of education (Sellar & Lingard, 2013). Collective action and citizen participation; and neoliberal, new-­ managerialist education governance are both concepts we, as critical early childhood scholars in RECE, are familiar with. The first as the ethical and methodological underpinning of much of our work, the latter as something we have been critiquing since the formation days of our community. Both persist in a global scenario of old and persistent struggles, inequalities and social, neocolonial, cultural and economic injustices, and accelerating existential global crises caused by them. Where does this leave our project of extending the intellectual “home” we began to construct three decades ago? Between a rock and a hard place, I am tempted to answer casually. But the dilemma we find ourselves in must be taken seriously. To distinguish and distance ourselves from the certainties and seemingly unquestionable truths of post-political, mainstream, normalised research and its entanglement with neoliberal agendas and corporate interests, we

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need to ask if we have rendered ourselves irrelevant in the struggle for social justice that once formed the basis for critical inquiry in our field. I explore the dilemma in the following parts of the chapter. I conclude with Freire’s (2004) notion of concrete hope: that we are well-placed to (re-) claim the political in our critical investigations, building on new (and old) alliances.

Between a Rock and a Hard Place Venturing from their Greek homelands into the unchartered waters of the western Mediterranean and into a world we now refer to as Western Europe, ancient seafarers regularly encountered a rather unpleasant dilemma: should they steer clear of the Italian coast on starboard, to avoid being eaten by a fearsome monster, each of its six heads sporting a triple row of shark-like teeth—only to risk being swallowed by an equally unsympathetic character drinking down the waters and vessels, and forcefully belching them out again on the Sicilian port side? Too often, the dilemma proved impossible to solve, as we learn from the fate of Odysseus who lost first his crew to Scylla and then his ship to Charybdis. Today, critical early childhood scholars, researchers, theorists and activists find themselves in similar troubled waters. They are trying hard not to give in to pressures and seemingly inescapable truths of an increasingly globalised mainstream early childhood research—normalisation of science in a Kuhnian (Kuhn, 1962) sense. Doing so, they have opened early childhood research to new areas of theory and methodology as they introduced, for example, poststructural thinking in the tradition of Michel Foucault and rhizomatic analysis born out of the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guatarri. More recently, critical discourse in early childhood appears to be turning its back on its foundations of both critique and discourse, as orienting principles are replaced by new materialist theories, post-humanist onto-­ epistemologies and post-qualitative methodologies. I position myself as a political scholar (which refers to my understanding of scholarship and research as intrinsically political practice, not to my limited qualifications in political science), who firmly believes that our role as researchers brings with it the privilege and the responsibility to work towards more just and equitable life experiences for all children and their families. This vantage point leads me to the question I want to explore in this chapter: In our individual and collective attempts at distancing ourselves from the monsters that mainstream research in our field has helped to create, are we at

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risk of losing—or worse, of carelessly abandoning—the transformative, emancipatory element of critical inquiry that aims at changing the world? There is a risk, I argue, of losing critical inquiry in early childhood to an equally dangerous monster trying to drown the entire project in a sea of privileged discourse that is self-referential at best, and borderline narcissistic at worst. Can we resist the Scylla of mainstream positivism, neoliberal imposition and corporate appropriation, as well as the Charybdis of exclusionary introspection? In doing so, can we draw on what Pedro Sotolongo calls “the power of marginal notions” (Sotolongo, 2013: 99) to build (global) collective action out of radical (local) perspectivity and multiplicity in early childhood research? Let us keep in mind that neither Scylla nor Charybdis were born a gruesome monster. Both started their careers as beautiful princesses. Scylla was transformed by witchcraft by jealous Circe. Charybdis’ fate was sealed by a revengeful Zeus in retaliation for appropriating land from the gods.

Scylla Surely, ours is a good time to be an early childhood researcher? Over the past decades, the first years of children’s lives have gained unprecedented attention by policy makers, economists and influential international bodies including the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the World Bank, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to name only a few (OECD, 2001, 2006; UNESCO, 2007; World Bank, 2003, 2011). A powerful supra-­ national political entity, the European Union (EU), has realised that the way it frames policies aimed at the youngest children and their families can be a major factor for the overall success (or failure) of the entire macro-­ economic project. As a consequence, the EU has committed itself to “providing all our children with the best start for the world of tomorrow” (European Commission, 2011: 1). Around the globe, there are plenty more examples for the turn towards young children, their development and education that have fully entered the political landscape since the 1990s. The successful establishment of early childhood as a crucial item on national and international policy agendas is also a success story for research in our field. In a world where global and local causes, practices and consequences of actions in all areas of human activity have become inseparable, it is important to note that the rise of early childhood research in its

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dominant form can itself be read as a story of local to global projections. Much of the prominence of early childhood on policy agendas derives from a broad consensus that the early years of life are unique in terms of human development. Therefore, what children experience in their first five years will somehow lay the Strong Foundations (UNESCO, 2007) for successful development, learning and achievement over the entire life course. This consensus is further reflected in a hierarchical conceptualisation of learning and development in steps or stages that have to be mastered in chronological order, and deeply embedded in a discourse that emphasises the importance of lifelong learning (Commission of the European Communities, 2005; European Commission, 2000; Lee et  al., 2008; World Bank, 2003). Mainstream early childhood research has played a major role in building this consensus. Over the years, large-scale studies have provided policy makers with the arguments that underpin policies and strategies aiming to increase participation in early childhood education and care as a matter of urgency: High quality ECEC is beneficial for all children, but particularly for those with a socioeconomically disadvantaged, migrant or Roma background, or with special educational needs, including disabilities. By helping to close the achievement gap and supporting cognitive, linguistic, social and emotional development, it can help to break the cycle of disadvantage and disengagement that often lead to early school leaving and to the transmission of poverty from one generation to the next. (Council of the European Union, 2011: Section 2, number 2)

That “high-quality” early childhood care and education is not only an effective and beneficial way of achieving ambitious policy goals, but also a cost-effective one is a central argument supported by mainstream early childhood scholarship. It is, as Stephen Barnett (2010) argues, the key to evidence-based policy that improves returns. The title of Barnett’s report to the OECD (Benefits and costs of quality per-school education: evidence based-policy to improve returns) is a good example of mainstream early childhood research adopting the language of mainstream policy. This, of course, is not a phenomenon specific to early childhood scholarship. From a pragmatic or realist perspective it has been argued across a wide range of academic disciplines that “we […] need to learn to speak in terms policymakers understand” (Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, 2013: para 3).

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The authors at Potomac elaborate their basic argument into four recommendations for academics who are trying to make their arguments heard by policy makers: Scientists need to be able to take a step (or five steps) back from their immediate research and articulate the global impact of their field. Communicate the impact in terms that focus on society rather than on science. (para 5) Articulate how the science will affect the general public today and five to ten years in the future; this is what matters to policy makers. Policymakers are overworked addressing the issues of today, much less tomorrow. (para 6) Write backwards. Policymakers need the conclusions and message up front; justification can follow. […] Policymakers have limited time so tell them up-front what you’re trying to say and justify yourself later. (para 7) Explore recommendations outside of “provide more funding for my project”. Just studying the problem more is neither the most satisfying nor often the most appropriate policy option. Recommend policy and law that directly address the issues at hand. (para 8) (Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, 2013)

Such an approach is firmly grounded in a paradigm of causality and certainty, and the practices it encourages are questionable, to say the least (articulate global impact—recommend policy—justification can follow). It is an excellent illustration of Michel Foucault’s notion of discourse: “practices that systematically form the objects [and subjects, I would like to add] of which they speak” (Foucault, 1972: 49). But as discourses converge, boundaries blur between agendas, interests and aims, and it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to ask critical questions. In the case of mainstream early childhood research, the converged discourse rests on a number of taken-for-granted concepts: that provision of high-quality services is beneficial for all children, that there is an “achievement gap” between children of dominant and marginalised groups in society, that “closing the gap” will alleviate poverty and in the course of doing so, resolve major economic failures of capitalist society. As I have discussed in more detail elsewhere (Urban, 2016b), this narrative is highly problematic for several reasons: • Quality, is concept that is either strongly contested (Cannella et al., 2016; Dahlberg et al., 1999, 2007; Jones et al., 2016; Penn, 2011; Urban, 2016a) or seen as irrelevant for the challenges facing early childhood (Moss, 2016).

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• The lived experience (Van Manen, 1990) of children from the most marginalised communities challenges the claim that increased participation in early childhood education and care (an explicit aim of EU policies) is universally beneficial (Bennett, 2012; Šikić-Mićanović et al., 2015). • The supposed achievement gap points to an increasingly narrow understanding of learning and development, orienting early childhood services ever closer toward achieving school-readiness as their foremost goal. • Strategies aimed at closing the gap are grounded in systematic bias against knowledge(s) and child rearing practices outside of dominant, Western, middle-class worldviews (Ng’asike, 2011; Nsamenang, 2004; Pence & Marfo, 2008; Penn, 2005). • Poverty is continuously used as a self-referential concept, with the intergenerational cycle of poverty seen as an intrinsic characteristic of the poor, to which they actively contribute by passing it on from one generation to the next. Such a narrative (which sees inequality and poverty as inevitable) effectively prevents us from asking critical questions about societal conditions that produce, reproduce and maintain inequality and poverty not so much as a result of but as a requirement for capitalist economy (Urban, 2016b: 405). In early childhood, the mainstream research/policy conversation has developed a coherent narrative that rests on extrapolated and exaggerated experiences in a relatively small scale local early childhood programme in an impoverished Black American community in Ypsilanti, Michigan (Derman-Sparks, 2016). The original protagonists of the project have long claimed the “beneficial effects of ECD [Early Childhood Development, M.U.] programs for young children who are living in poverty and otherwise potentially vulnerable to failure in school” (Schweinhart, 2006: 67). However, the claim gained global prominence through the work of economist James Heckman. The Nobel Laureate draws on Human Capital theory as he comes to the economic conclusion that investment in early childhood programmes lead to high returns at a one-to-seven ratio (Heckman, 2006). In their attempts to connect to dominant policy discourses, many from inside the early childhood field have taken on his argument. However, as sociologists Hilary and Steven Rose point out, it is

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a fine claim in the abstract, but it ignores the reality of typical US social policy in which pioneering projects of higher quality are frequent, and indeed attract international interest. But are rarely generalized out at the level of an individual state, let alone across the nation. (Rose & Rose, 2016: 64)

In any case, the Human Capital argument has been, and continues to be, a powerful driver of investment in early childhood programmes around the globe. But, just as beautiful princess Scylla was transformed into a monster by Circe the witch, uncritical readings of Human Capital Theory have supported and accompanied a surge in private-for-profit activities in early childhood globally. This in itself is not a new development. Corporatisation of early childhood services and free market regimes have a long history in many countries. Authors including Helen Penn and Eva Lloyd in the UK (Lloyd & Penn, 2012) and Frances Press and Christine Woodrow in Australia (Press & Woodrow, 2005, 2009) have written about the risks to quality and equality of services, and to entire national childcare systems (in the case of the collapse of ABC Learning Ltd.), and even the OECD have expressed their concern: In many OECD countries, the level of regulation of services for children under 3 gives rise for concern: much of the child care sector is private and unregulated, with staff training and pedagogical programming being particularly weak. (OECD, 2006: 14)

In recent years, however, privatisation and corporatisation of education has expanded on an unprecedented scale and, as Adamson et al. (2016) show, private interests have come to dominate the education system to an extent that undermines its purpose. Privatisation, they argue, adversely affects the right to education. Their findings resonate with Tan’s (2014) detailed critique of Human Capital Theory, as he succinctly points out with reference to the work of Nussbaum (2010) and Ball (2010): Education is no longer conceived as an integrated strategy to promote freedom, self-enrichment, and human development, but rather it is a business activity driven by profit or a commodity in the market. (Tan, 2014: 429)

What should alert us about these developments is not only the open pursuit of profit interests in a sector that should be foremost a public

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responsibility and public good. It is a real matter of concern that the project of early childhood research, speaking the language of policy makers in order to gain attention and influence, is over. We have entered a post-­ political era where the interests of lead actors (i.e. OECD, World Bank and increasingly venture-philanthropy) go hand in hand with the interests of global education corporations. As the business magazine Forbes reminds us, “Education is a trillion dollar industry and it will take 2 decades to enable the industry to reach to major inflection point” (Forbes, 2014: para 8).

Charybdis In the face of an increasingly powerful global alliance between mainstream research—Big Social Science (Torrance, 2015), neoliberal policy agendas, and corporate interests—critical scholars have systematically been marginalised. Reflecting on the “historical present” of critical qualitative inquiry, Denzin and Giardina (2016): 5) come to the following conclusion: especially those scholars in the humanities and social sciences doing critical, feminist, poststructural, postmodern, and posthuman research face a crossroads, one in which (a) the act of research is inherently political; (b) that act is governed by a particular free-market politics of research in the corporate university; (c) (post-)positivism still dominates this conversation; and (d) anti-foundational approaches to research are often marginalized.

Critical early childhood scholars have been trying hard to carve out, and protect spaces of resistance against the political and onto-­ epistemological monster. Within these spaces, they have been not stopped to question seemingly unquestionable truths and the rules of the game that normalised—in a Kuhnian (1962) sense—early childhood research has become. Internationally, they have built a community of scholars and supportive spaces that have allowed opening early childhood research to new areas of theory, philosophy and methodology. Michel Foucault’s work has provided us with the necessary tools for understanding the workings of power in all our understandings, conceptualisations and actions (e.g. MacNaughton, 2005). Drawing on the writing of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guatarri, non-linear, rhizomatic thinking has shaped our analyses and practices (e.g. Olsson, 2009). More recently, feminist/queer, new materialist and posthuman work, inspired by writers like Rosi Braidotti

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(2002, 2011) and Karen Barad (2007) has further challenged our understandings of what research might mean when mind/meaning/ matter/agency/can no longer be separated or attributed to distinct Cartesian researcher-subjects. They all contribute to a shared history, going back to the late 1970s, of “asking questions about the narrow perspectives of the dominant empirical research in child development/ECE in research in the United States and in Great Britain, Australia, Northern, Western, and East-Central Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Africa” (Bloch et al., 2014: 3). The emerging critical work eventually found its home in the international RECE group, which held its first conference at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1991. Measured in terms of new and unconventional thinking, sustained critical debate and scholarly output, the mission to reconceptualise our inquiries, understandings and practices concerning young children has surely been successful—as documented, not least, in two edited volumes (Bloch et al., 2014, 2018). In his contribution to the debate, Michael O’Loughlin (2014, 2016) recalls a sense of “nurturance, hope, possibility, and a perpetual wish for more” (O’Loughlin, 2014: 63) at the very heart of the RECE movement. He also wonders for what, if anything, RECE and its critical contributors will be remembered “in a world of predatory capitalism, ruthless mechanical notions of accountability, and disinterest in the existential and liberatory potential of care and education” (63). O’Loughlin’s question is one that the neoliberal, corporate university, in new-managerialist speak, regularly framed as impact: Have we had “any lasting influence on policy and practices?” (63). The answer, on a global scale, has long not been encouraging. As countries tentatively emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, only to face a perfect storm of mutually reinforcing existential crises, there are signs the picture is beginning to change (as we can see in the analysis provided by the OECD cited previously). However, while some light is beginning to “fall through the cracks” (speaking with Leonard Cohen),2 like Michael O’Loughlin, we are “still waiting for the revolution” (O’Loughlin, 2014: 63). The apparent lack of impact is an interesting—and worrying—parallel between mainstream “normal” science and the movement that set out to overcome its limitations. Especially for the most marginalised children, life situations have hardly improved and growing up under what some used to call (arrogantly) third world conditions has become the new normal for an increasing number of children in the most affluent countries (Lansley &

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Mack, 2015; Šikić-Mićanović et al., 2015; Urban, 2015, 2016b). However, there are crucial differences between the two sides as well: While the effects in relation to the broad claims—reduction of poverty and inequality, social cohesion etc. —have been questionable at least, the mainstream narrative has clearly had a strong impact on policies and practices. This, according to its own accounts, is not the case for the critical inquiry camp. Having been involved with critical scholarship in early childhood for most of my professional and academic career (including publications, projects of collaborative inquiry, organising and hosting RECE conferences, and many other activities), I am well aware of the marginalisation of small-­ scale, mostly qualitative, and usually un- or under-funded research in the corridors of power. But I have also come to believe that proactive exclusion and disregard by policy makers and research councils is only one aspect (albeit a highly effective one) of a more complex picture. Faced with a hostile external environment, critical early childhood inquiry has circled the wagons and entered a phase of introspection. At conferences and seminars, there has always been a tendency of talking to ourselves rather than the outside world. This is understandable and necessary because mutual support and solidarity are, in my view, the foundations of critical inquiry. But as a result, are we more concerned with analysing policy than actually making it? There is a second critical aspect of the situation critical early childhood inquiry finds itself in: The initial raison d’être for the movement was to critique (and promote alternatives to) a positivist, conservatively developmentalist, and politically hegemonic mainstream. This, however, seems to have changed to some extent, and the critique turned inward. It is, at least, one possible reading of the rising number of contributions to the discussion that situate themselves in a post-qualitative (Lather & St. Pierre, 2013) paradigm or “turn away from methodology altogether” (Denzin & Giardina, 2016: 5). We have entered unknown waters: a post-critical, Latourian (Latour, 2004) mare incognitum, not yet reframed with a new ethics “of ethical accountability in the sense of a fundamental reconfiguration of our being in the world that is ethnically diverse, technologically and globally mediated, and fast changing” (Braidotti, 2011: 301). It is urgent, Braidotti continues to argue, that we find “new and alternative modes of political and ethical agency” (301).

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Philosophers Have Only Interpreted the World: A Role for Vagabonds Efficaces Talking about the purpose of education (and insisting on the impossibility of a purpose-free education), Paulo Freire introduces the concept of directivity: The directivity of education means that education starts from a given level and goes beyond itself. It also means that education has always implicit utopias, dreams, desires and values. I cannot simply say: “I educate for nothing”. Teachers insist on being teachers, this means they have a kind of dream. (Figueiredo-Cowen & Gastaldo, 1995: 18)

Critical inquiry in our field needs a similar understanding of its purpose. We cannot inquire for nothing and we urgently need to go beyond the self-referential conversation. Our conversations, instead, should be facing outward—and they should be centred around our utopias, dreams, desires and values which we need to move from the implicit to the explicit. This conversation will be controversial, as it would be naïve to pretend that there can be one dream, one set of values, one utopia we all share. But to engage in that conversation, and to proactively initiate it within and, most importantly beyond our community of critical early childhood scholars will be a crucial step in a necessary search for “new and alternative modes of political and ethical agency”, and to confront the “inertia or self-­interest of neoconservative thought” (Braidotti, 2011: 301). It will require our concerted efforts to (re-)politicise our research. Citing Leslie Bloom and Patricia Sawin (Bloom & Sawin, 2009: 338, 340–342, 344), Norman Denzin (2015) suggests five goals for critical qualitative inquiry that can serve well for a preliminary orientation of the project of a re-politicised early childhood inquiry: . Place the voices of the oppressed at the centre of the inquiry. 1 2. Use inquiry to reveal sites for change and activism. 3. Use inquiry and activism to help people. 4. Affect social policy by getting critiques heard and acted on by policy makers. 5. Affect change in the inquirer’s life, thereby serving as a model. (Denzin, 2015: 33)

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There are new, emerging alliances we can build on, as well as some old and perhaps not so obvious ones. New-materialist, feminist and posthuman thought, for instance, resonates with the work of indigenous scholars from around the world. It offers the possibility to go beyond the confines of Cartesian dualism that has left us, in the Western, minority world, with a notion of a child whose mind, body, spirituality are disconnected from each other and from their being in the world. It will be important, however, that we are aware of the risk of our silencing indigenous scholarship and activist voices through new layers of white, privileged discourse and onto-epistemological neo-colonialism in order to gain academic distinction. Required are geo-historical modesty and acknowledgement of origin: “Indigenous ontologies never had a nature-culture dualism, never truly differentiated nature and culture” (Jones & Hoskins, 2016: 79). Writing with the perspective of the philosophy and pedagogy of Friedrich Froebel (1782–1852), the pioneer of the Kindergarten, I want to conclude with an offer for another possible, and, I believe, necessary alliance. Posthumanist thinker Karen Barad insists: “Matter feels, converses, suffers, desires, yearns and remembers” (Dolphijn & Van Der Tuin, 2012: 59). Nearly 200 years earlier, Friedrich Froebel places unity of the human, non-human and spiritual world at the centre of his pedagogy: When he is at play a child talks continuously, thus indicating that with him talking is not yet distinguished from himself as talker, nor names from the things named. Play and speech are the elements in which the child now lives. So he [sic] attributes the same life to all about him. The pebble, the chip of wood, the plant, the flower, the animal — each and all can hear and feel and speak. In childhood there is a four-fold development of life—the child’s own inner life; his [sic] life in relation with parents and family; his life in relation, common to him and them, with a higher invisible Being; and, especially, his life in relation with nature, regarded as endowed with life like his own. (Froebel, 1826 [1912]: 50, emphasis added)

But besides being the first posthumanist thinker in early childhood, Froebel also placed his pedagogy in the context of a dramatically changing society in early nineteenth century Europe. The political climate was one of civil rights movement (1833) and revolution (1848). Early childhood care and education for all, Froebel insisted, was a public good and responsibility, and one of the preconditions for the democratic republic the 1848

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revolutionaries aimed to build. No wonder, then, that after the collapse of the revolution the powers of State banned Froebel’s Kindergarten for being atheist, socialist and outright dangerous. This is a proud legacy for critical early childhood scholarship, and it is our responsibility to carry on with the struggle. Fernand Deligny, the French educator, fiercely opposed to and by the educational establishment—“primordial communist, nonviolent guerrilla, weaver of networks, cartographer of wandering lines” (Hilton, 2015: para 1)—suggested that the “liberation of the people” necessarily begins with children, requiring “light-footed educators, provocateurs of joy […] child-enthusiast effective vagabonds” (Deligny, 1970). He also introduced the idea of wander lines—lignes d’erre—which would later be taken up by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari as “lines of flight” in Capitalism and schizophrenia (Deleuze & Guattari, 1983). Vagabonds can be effective (efficaces) in many ways, intended and unintended. As Murray in Chap. 9 clearly shows their very existence challenges the certainties of the settled community, its reactions reaching from stigmatisation and marginalisation to oppression and repeated attempts at extinction. Researchers embarking on critical investigations becoming vagabonds efficaces is an appealing image to me. Critical inquiry necessarily involves sympathetic non-compliance and subversive challenges to the mighty edifices of certainty that dominate the territory, the land owned and controlled by the settled. Contexts change, and with them our potential to not only engage with what they should be changing to, but to transform ourselves in the process. This, as Karl Marx points out in his responses to Feuerbach in 1845, is profoundly political: revolutionary praxis. As Marx (Engels & Marx, 2009) almost wrote: Early childhood theorists continue to interpret the world. The point, however, is to change it.

Notes 1. www.receinternational.org 2. Refers to Leonard Cohens’s song “Anthem” from the 1992 album The Future.

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Press, F., & Woodrow, C. (2005). Commodification, corporatisation and children’s spaces. Australian Journal of Education, 49, 278–291. Press, F., & Woodrow, C. (2009). The giant in the playground: Investigating the reach and implications of the corporatisation of childcare provision. In D. King & G. Meagher (Eds.), Paid care in Australia: Politics, profits, practices. Sydney University Press. Ridge, N., & Kippels, S. (2019). UNESCO, education, and the private sector: A relationship on whose terms? In M.  P. Do Amaral, G.  Steiner-Khamsi, & C.  Thompson (Eds.), Researching the global education industry: Commodification, the market and business involvement. Springer International Publishing. Rose, H., & Rose, S. P. R. (2016). Can neuroscience change our minds? Polity Press. Schweinhart, L. J. (2006). Outcomes of the High/Scope Perry preschool study and Michigan school readiness program. World Bank. Seitzer, H., Baek, C., & Steiner-Khamsi, G. (2023). Instruments of lesson-­ drawing: Comparing the knowledge brokerage of the OECD and the World Bank. In Policy studies (pp. 1–21). Sellar, S., & Lingard, B. (2013). The OECD and global governance in education. Journal of Education Policy, 28, 710–725. Šikić-Mićanović, L., Ivatts, A. R., Vojak, D., & Geiger-Zeman, M. (2015). Roma early childhood inclusion+ Croatia report. Open Society Foundations. Sjøberg, S. (2019). The PISA-syndrome – How the OECD has hijacked the way we perceive pupils, schools and education. Confero: Essays on Education, Philosophy and Politics, 7, 34–88. Sotolongo, P. (2013). Idea-forces: The power of marginal notions. East-West Affairs: A Quarterly Journal of North-South Relations in Postnormal Times [Online]. Available: https://eastwestaffairs.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/ ewa2-­final1.pdf. Accessed 13 Apr 2014. Tan, E. (2014). Human capital theory: A holistic criticism. Review of Educational Research, 84, 411–445. Torrance, H. (2015). Investigating research power: Networks, assemblages, and the production of ‘Big’ social science. In G.  S. Cannella, M.  S. Pérez, & P. A. Pasque (Eds.), Critical qualitative inquiry: Foundations and futures. Left Coast Press, Inc. United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation. (2007). Strong foundations. Early childhood care and education. In Education for all global monitoring report. UNESCO. Urban, M. (2015). From ‘closing the gap’ to an ethics of affirmation. Reconceptualising the role of early childhood services in times of uncertainty. European Journal of Education, 50, 293–306.

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Urban, M. (2016a). Starting wrong? The trouble with a debate that just won’t go away. In G. S. Cannella, M. Slazar Pérez, & I.-F. Lee (Eds.), Critical examinations of quality. Regulation, disqualification and erasure. Peter Lang. Urban, M. (2016b). Sufficiently well informed and seriously concerned? European Union policy responses to marginalisation, structural racism and ­institutionalised exclusion in early childhood. Alberta Journal of Educational Research, 61, 399–416. Urban, M. (2022). Scholarship in times of crises: Towards a trans-discipline of early childhood. Comparative Education, 58, 383–401. Urban, M., & Swadener, B. B. (2016). Democratic accountability and contextualised systemic evaluation. A comment on the OECD initiative to launch an International Early Learning Study (IELS). International Critical Childhood Policy Studies, 5, 6–18. Urban, M., Guevara, J., & Moss, P. (2022). ¿PISA desde la cuna? El Estudio Internacional de Aprendizaje Temprano e implicancias para América Latina. Revista Educação e Pesquisa, 48. https://doi.org/10.1590/S1678-­ 4634202248248362esp Van Manen, M. (1990). Researching lived experience: Human science for an action sensitive pedagogy. State University of New York Press. World Bank. (2003). Lifelong learning in the global knowledge economy: Challenges for developing countries. World Bank. World Bank. (2011). Learning for all. Investing in people’s knowledge and skills to promote development. World Bank group education strategy 2020. World Bank.

Conclusion: Reconceptualizing Early Childhood Care and Education and Home with Love Margarita Ruiz Guerrero and Andrew Gibbons

Home is a powerful concept and experience in early childhood care and education (ECCE). This power can be observed daily in early childhood centres as they resist Dorothy’s magical mantra (Baum, 2020), as they claim that there is indeed a place like home—and that place is the early childhood centre. Of course, when early childhood centres model themselves on the idea of home, they are at the same time actually agreeing with Dorothy, that there is indeed no place like home (Baum, 2020). Yet, in saying there is no place like home, home is also furnished with utopian qualities, now leading to the possibility that home is a myth.

M. R. Guerrero Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA, USA e-mail: [email protected] A. Gibbons (*) Auckland University of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Gibbons et al. (eds.), Home in Early Childhood Care and Education, Critical Cultural Studies of Childhood, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43695-6_11

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The provocation that home can be a place and not a place at the same time is of particular importance in the study of ECCE. This provocation invites a broad range of questions concerning home and many associated phenomena. These phenomena reveal, to follow Heidegger (1971), the ways in which being is understood as dwelling in the world. Dwelling is, for Heidegger, not some static fixed and instrumental approach to living, but rather a deeply existential and poetic presencing of being. To make sense of this idea of poetic dwelling, consider the extraordinariness of home. The chapters of this book invite a journey into the extraordinariness of home. The majority of chapters began as papers delivered at a plenary during the 2017 Reconceptualizing Early Childhood Education (RECE) conference in Toronto. The conference theme was Finding a Home in the World: Migration, Indigeneity, and Citizenship. The plenary’s series of papers engaged in analysis of the idea of home. In coming together as a collective of authors, we recognized that the experience of working together in questioning home and ECCE was a commitment to a shared journey—a journey we entitled Stories, Theories, and Reconceptualizations of Home in Early Childhood Education: A Caravan of Nomadic Thinking. Our thinking about home was, as a caravan and as caravans, drawn away from static foundations towards a dynamic and fluid exploration of education and care. The approach of nomadic thinking bound us to a common goal despite being a non-binding way of thinking (Braidotti, 2013). Nomadism challenged us to embrace radical othernesses (Mouffe, 1994)—and captured the spirit of the wild carnival of caravans that pulled into RECE 2017. The plenary presentations offered multiple lenses and approaches to make sense of home as a conceptual space that operates in many complex and often-interrelated ways—for instance as intellectual space, as ethic, as built environment, as disciplinary technology, as memory, and as threshold. The presentations invited reconceptualizations of home, considering the way in which home constructs certain ideas, relationships, and goals, and in particular how home might be a clichéd operant in the grand narratives of early childhood discourse—grand narratives such as the home-­ centre/parent–teacher partnership and, as noted above, the construction of an environment as home-like. The nomadic approach taken in this book has allowed us to move between and among ideas. This approach has also challenged us to reconsider the official discourses and consecrated fables of our times, and to think beyond the limits of the language of home. A

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nomadic inquiry into home opens up understandings of the functioning of home in the very construction of early childhood curriculum (from the patterns of dwelling within a community and society, to the expectations of ECCE in creating a home for children while parents and caregivers work). The authors share a view that there is something significant for teachers and families to engage in, to not take-for-granted, when we think about, talk about, act out, make, build, dwell in, idealize (and so on) home. From plenary to book, the journey has been challenging. During the conference, we were excited by conversations regarding the possibility of a book featuring the eight panel contributors, and inviting new authors, who had shared an interest in joining the caravan. In the years since, the journey of the caravan has been rather disrupted by impactful global events—events that created new priorities and responsibilities, and that impacted on the possibilities for the caravan to come together—as well as challenging personal events. Working on this project together, we have experienced being at home and homeless, being intimate and distant, excited and disappointed, privileged and marginalized. The irony of collating a collection of chapters on home was not lost on the authors as the world collectively, conceptually, and for many literally, went home during the pandemic. New configurations of home emerged. Yet also, enduring configurations of marginalization, discrimination and privilege were recognized. These narratives add to the discourse of home. As the chapters in this book attest, in a globalized world of mobility, migration and displacement, the idea of home demands new ways of thinking and feeling about place, family and belonging. Events such as being at home, leaving home, arriving home and homelessness suggest an increasing complexity. Home is not always a place of safety, security and belonging. For some, it can be deeply unsettling and even dangerous. Collectively, the authors and chapters have addressed the idea of home from incommensurable discourses and a diversity of places and things— what they have in common is interrupting the taken-for-granted idea of home as a homogenous construct. The task the authors undertook was not to argue that there is something wrong with an idea of home in relation to ECCE, but that when thinking and talking about home, there is an opportunity for early childhood communities to engage in questions concerning home. This is intense curriculum work that opens up ideas for the planned and unplanned learning and teaching that motivates the community (from the ways in which the play of children is shaped by home, to the use of symbols and

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metaphors of home throughout the time and space of a day in the life of an early childhood centre community). The chapters address policies and borders of home in relation to displaced peoples. Murray’s photographic-narrative chapter reveals the voices of Travellers in Ireland as they face challenges produced by policies that reinforce narrow settler conceptualizations of home. Habashi’s chapter on Palestine provides a detailed account of policies that forbid and/or criminalize experiences of home. In Maldonado and Swadener’s chapter, home is theorized as a wavering zone that polices borders and produces effects of dehumanization for immigrant families in the United States. Urban turns to Greek mythology to chart the globalized and neoliberalized seas of ECCE, invoking political action, social justice, and Freire’s philosophy of hope as a way to thwart the excesses of managerialism and big politics. A philosophy of home is put into practice within the chapters of this book. Tesar deploys multiple philosophical lenses to respond to an immigrant’s plight of moving home (a promise of a better life). Gibbons’ deconstruction of home, drawing on Derrida’s hospitality, questions how we respond to home in early childhood curriculum and pedagogy. Likewise, Arndt offers a way to reconsider immigrant early childhood teachers in their unique roles, through Kristeva’s philosophy of the foreigner and Braidotti’s posthumanism. Sapon-Shevin turns to many taken for granted curriculum practices to argue that views of home can erase difference and close down critique of and responses to inequities for diverse learners. Gaches’ autoethnographic storytelling brought memory, travel and artefact of home into focus in an account of moving home (country) and embracing a new way to be at home. The caravan that emerged in 2017 has endured. The disruptions of the pandemic required a care for each other as authors, and the care of the series editors and publishers for the caravan to resolve into this book. The caravan has completed this journey, but of course a caravan of nomadic inquiry has no end point (Braidotti, 2014). Each chapter reveals intersecting themes—themes that can be seen as further pathways to explore. The collegial home is one such pathway. In recognizing this pathway, we would like to acknowledge RECE as a home in its commitment to challenging early childhood policies and practices, questioning universalisms that limit and marginalize experiences, and exploring diverse methods of researching ECCE.

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As a global organization reflecting diverse cultural experiences of children and families, Reconceptualizing Early Childhood Education (RECE) members honor a wide range of ways of knowing and realize a fundamental commitment to social justice in all their activities (https://receinterna­ tional.org/about/). We decry policies and actions in the US and elsewhere that protect white privilege and heteronormativity, and perpetuate multiple forms of oppression. We also note with alarm the growing attacks on freedom of thought and expression affecting children, educators, and families. (RECE, 2023)

As a home, RECE welcomes reconceptualist colleagues who openly question seemingly simple concepts that shape the nature and purpose of early childhood care and education—and, of course, one concept is that of home. The hope imbued in the writing of this book is that an openness to questioning that drives RECE nurtures an experience of belonging. Many of the authors draw on bell hooks (2009) and a sense of home as a place of belonging. For hooks, home is a place of origin, a kind of anchor associated with place, welcome, and wellbeing—ideas that are arguably very familiar to early childhood curriculum and to early childhood pedagogies. When bell hooks returns to her geographic home, she talks about her interconnectedness with the people, their struggles, and their stories associated with where they belong. This book takes up these ideas to attest in some way to the politics of home. Home as politics is an important construct in the making and un-making of homes. So where to from here? We offer up a gentle way forward in the idea of love. Love is a characteristic and an assumed criterion for being an early childhood teacher. Many of the chapter authors are early childhood teacher educators, familiar with the idea that a teacher’s journey begins with ideas of a love of children. Consider this question: when students teachers are asked why they are choosing to study to be early childhood teachers, how common, and how important, is the answer “I love children”? Like the idea of home, love can be both deeply existential and tragically superficial. It seems at times too easy to turn to love and/or home as devices to explain an idea or a relationship without really explaining anything at all. Yet, the extraordinariness of love and home are worth dwelling in—worth questioning, disrupting, and caring for. It is worth taking seriously the provocation that in the connection of love and home, there is a relationship that will fundamentally alter the ways in which the world

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is understood and experienced—think for instance of the relationship between father and daughter that reveals the presence of new dimensions in the film Interstellar (Nolan, 2014). In concluding this project on home, we suggest taking care with the expression and the matter of love as an important pathway to explore, sensing that love and home are more than just accidentally intersecting ideas here.

Where There Is Love, There Is Hope, and Therefore Home: A Vignette for the Journeys to Come Margarita Ruiz Guerrero, Western Washington University As organic and mundane (Ruíz Guerrero & Pérez, in press) a chat with a friend can be, Andrew and I came to realize that theorizing home and love was indeed magical. It all started talking about the 2023 RECE conference. We talked about the ways in which RECE has become our home and therefore how the people of RECE were our family. For me, when talking about family (blood related and chosen family), it is hard not to become emotional, since that emotion is also what drives who I am. As we messaged, I shared a short video clip of an interview with actor Sir Ian McKellen. McKellen had to choose three words that were meaningful to him. One of the words he chose was love. In discussing his thinking, he connected love to what he recognized as the feeling of being at home (Bishop & Pitts, 2020-present; Le Capharnaüm 2.0, 2022). While listening to McKellen sharing these memories and ideas, the audience can listen, feel and see (in the short video) the emotion in his words, especially when talking about what he calls home. He shares how when a total stranger, a taxi driver, calls him love, he knows he is at home. The taxi driver simply says “where do you wanna go love?”… but of course there is nothing simple about this question and its many gestures. The emotion in McKellen’s words drives us to believe that home for McKellen is the intersection of place, people, and indeed love (Bishop & Pitts, 2020-present; Le Capharnaüm 2.0, 2022). The home that welcomes McKellen, where the taxi driver asks “where do you wanna go love?”, is Manchester. This is where we were soon going to be for RECE, 2023, at the same time as we were producing this concluding chapter on reconceptualizing home. So the book, the themes of love and home, RECE, and Manchester, have woven together in an unexpected moment.

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In this social media era of sending gifs and memes and short video clips, mostly to joke around with friends, to find one that “just” makes sense to the concept and emotion we want to convey is more than serendipity. There is a cosmic or spiritual uncanniness that makes us take notice, and that energizes our work. For us, that nomadic moment was a liberatory practice (hooks, 1994). hooks (1994) expresses that a liberatory practice is one that allows us to find ways “that transform consciousness, creating a climate of free expression” (44) and that whenever “we love justice and stand on the side of justice we refuse simplistic binaries” (10). Whether we read hooks (2003) or listen to McKellen, we sense the complexity and contribution of love and home as a sense of belonging, building community, and trust with those around us. Yet love is often sadly limited in its connection to teaching and learning—symptomatic of a narrow romantic perception, a limited and limiting gaze. hooks (1994: 44) states that challenging those misconceptions between love, teaching, and learning “is the essence of a truly liberatory liberal arts education”. In particular, with commitment to hooks on love and liberation, we can see that the action of asking “where do you wanna go love?” breaks oppressive cycles, especially those endured by the LGBTQ+ communities. The active form of love to refer to someone, challenges and refuses dichotomies and oppressive constructs around gender-sexuality identity and pronouns, connecting not just a language of home but being at home in language and in the poetic agency of meaning that is the rich tapestry of an early childhood centre community (Frank, 2012). Challenging these oppressive constructs incites thinking about love from an intersectional point of view. This intersectional point of view inspires us to see love as dynamic, evolving, and empowering instead of static and oversimplified. Therefore, rather than see this action of calling a stranger’s love as a simple act, we call it a radical love which has the power to lead us to the possibility of a political change (Freire, 2005). Sir Ian McKellen (Bishop & Pitts, 2020-present; Le Capharnaüm 2.0, 2022) expresses that if we learn to call total strangers love, “it [the world] would be a rather better place wouldn’t it?” The Political Power of Love: Challenging the Idea of Fearing Home Gloria Anzaldúa (1987: 19) argues that homophobic constructs in society lead to a “[f]ear of going home. And of not being taken in”. McKellen shares how before “coming out” publicly, he felt this fear too (Bishop & Pitts,

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2020-present). When he spoke publicly about his sexuality, he found a community, a home where he had a loving connection and/or relationship with people who he might never meet, who speak different languages, live in different places, but who shared something in common. Lorde (1984: 129) shares that “[i]t is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences”. Love matters. Love is a scholarly, theoretical, home. “When I was a child, it was clear to me that life was not worth living if we did not know love. I wish I could testify that I came to this awareness because of the love I felt in my life. But it was love’s absence that let me know how much love mattered” (hooks, 2000: ix). As a woman of color in academia, I, Margarita, often don’t feel a sense of belonging in big conferences such as at the American Educational Research Association (AERA). AERA has always been to me an intensive conference, always in big cities, where everyone seems to be busy getting somewhere. The idea of going to AERA usually creates anxiety and stress since I do not feel it as home. However, in 2023, AERA was in Chicago, and it happened to be the first time after graduating that I got to see and present with my dear friend and mentor Michelle Salazar Pérez. After my graduation, we both moved to different institutions. It was the first time I had to be by myself, dealing with expectations of academia in a predominately white institution; we kept in contact, texting and emailing each other. However, as soon as we hugged at the hotel lobby after four years of not sharing the same space, tears came out from both of us, it was then when I felt at home. At that moment, her love and support felt in a warm hug mattered the most, since it was no longer absent. We have worked together on different projects framed by our use of Black, Chicana, and Latina feminism. The presentation at AERA was part of a panel full of intelligent, strong, and brave women of color, making me feel at home, represented, and loved. The political power of love, in this case, gave me the opportunity to “embrace the logic of both/and” (hooks, 2003: 10). These women of color I shared my theoretical home with, see the world where the body, mind, and spirit (hooks, 1994) are interconnected. Therefore, AERA this time was not only an intensive conference but also the place where people I care and love gathered together. In moments of love and laughter we are at home. “Emotional connections tend to be suspect in a world where the mind is valued above all else, where the idea that one should be and can be objective is paramount” (hooks, 2003: 127). The requirement of scholarship, teaching and service at our jobs makes us overlook the importance of talking and laughing with friends in

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academia. There’s a certain kind of requirement that seems hostile to these importances—there’re many configurations of that hostile land, including the contemporary managerial configurations (Ball, 2015, 2016). Academia or the sense of professionalism in it, often dominates our ways of being since it limits moments of joy. hooks (2003: 128) expresses that “[w]here there is domination there is no place for love”. When we allow ourselves to be vulnerable and feel, transformation happens. I strongly believe that praxis and reflexivity enable critical wisdom and the most needed critical love (Freire, 2005; hooks, 1994, 2000, 2003). This wisdom does not come from a rational/objective standpoint, on the contrary it comes from feeding our bodies, minds, and spirits with all the love and compassion we deserve. Last April, two friends and I had a “High School reunion”. We have known each other since HS, and we all took different journeys. One lives in Chicago. One lives in Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico. I was living in the state of Washington. We all grew apart but have always felt so close. The idea of home, as a geographical location, especially for the ones living in the USA, is Xalapa. However, we were in Chicago seeking wisdom and some relief from our routines, our heartbreaks, and our stress. As we came together, everything that felt hard to deal with disappeared. hooks, in All About Love (2000: xx) mentions that “women are more often love’s practitioners”, and so we practiced love in midnight talks, laughs, listening to music, singing, and eating. In our reunion, we practiced love while feeding our spirits, laughing constantly. We felt safe in that shared space; the one we have created since high school, the one we called home. This feeling of love and loving home did not come from the geographical location, nor did it come from a sexist point of view, on the contrary, it came from our sisterhood love. Sisterhood love is referred to as the “philosophical undertaking” (hooks, 2000: xx) home that establishes a promise to achieve and understand the bare yet powerful meaning of love, and to make sense of it in our everyday realities. In this quest for the promised and utopian fantasy of love and home, we were left with a sense of resilience and empowerment in which we escaped from our multiple realities. Without doubt, now more than ever, we know that we have each other. We will carry with us those moments of midnight talks, laughs, food, the music played and sung in our hearts as our beloved home. We all reached to the radical love, to critical wisdom, with the compassion we deserve within our sisterhood.

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A Love Letter Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word “love” here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace- not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth. (Baldwin’s declaration of love, cited in hooks 2003: p. 136)

Dear love, I dare to write you these lines to tell you how much I love you without aiming for a professional recognition and even without knowing you. Over the past years, love, I have learned so much, more than any of my school teachers could have imagined. I understand love, it was all they knew, yet I wish more school teachers now know that there is more to teach than math problems or science. I wish my school teachers had taught me about love and compassion. hooks (2000: xxiv), in All About Love, states that “[p]rofound changes in the way we think and act must take place if we are to create a loving culture”. I learned this from my friends, my dear group of friends who have been with me since childhood. I share these words for you to read if you feel pressured, left behind, and/or lost. I have been there often, don’t you feel alone, I am here with you, I will be your friend, love. You can come to me, to my home if you don’t feel safe in yours, you can talk to me, share things with me, I will listen and understand you. I want to be there for you as my friends have been there for me. In the last few years, love, I have learned that even when we might look and be so different, even when my reality is completely different, even if we live on completely opposite sides of the world, we might share some of the same struggles. “I have been criticized for having too much passion, for being “too” emotional” (hooks, 2003: 127), but this time, I don’t care. Out of honesty, love, being emotional enables us to connect in unimaginable ways. When we can finally share our emotional and multidimensional beings, we will feel safe, supported, loved, empowered and part of a community. Only then, we will be at home. This home, my love, will be free of masks… masks that society has made us wear to protect itself from “too” emotional and passionate beings. These passionate and emotional people will be the ones who deconstruct normalized ways of being, living, and feeling and reconstruct them in this loving, nurturing, and empowering culture in which there will not be masks since there will not be domination (hooks, 1994, 2000, 2003).

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You and I, love, are here, you can count on me, let’s do this together. Let’s build this loving culture with tenderness and kindness, where homes are a safe place, a place where you don’t fear, a place of love. Let’s hope for a world for “us who are committed to imagine a world… that is less ugly, more beautiful, less discriminatory, more democratic, less dehumanizing, and more humane” (Freire, 1970: 25). A world where we can call one another love since as Sir Ian McKellen expresses if we learn to call total strangers love, “it [the world] would be a rather better place wouldn’t it?” (Bishop & Pitts, 2020-present; Le Capharnaüm 2.0, 2022). With all my love to and for you. Love…

References Anzaldúa, G. E. (1987). Borderlands/la frontera. Aunt Lute Books. Ball, S. J. (2015). Living the neo-liberal university. European Journal of Education, 50(3), 258–261. Ball, S. J. (2016). Neoliberal education? Confronting the slouching beast. Policy Futures in Education, 14(8), 1046–1059. Baum, L. F. (2020/1900). The wonderful wizard of Oz. https://www.gutenberg. org/files/55/55-­0.txt Bishop, J., & Pitts, T. (Hosts). (2020-present). The three little words: Ian McKellen [Audio podcast]. Amazon Music. https://music.amazon.com/pod casts/47fa15e2-­0414-­4432-­87a7-­351d1a25ea25/episodes/f512293e-­9361-­ 4994-­91e1-­e3ace3181885/three-­little-­words-­ian-­mckellen Braidotti, R. (2013). Nomadic ethics. Deleuze Studies, 7(3), 342–359. Braidotti, R. (2014). Writing as a nomadic subject. Comparative Critical Studies, 11(2–3), 163–184. Frank, J. (2012). The significance of the poetic in early childhood education: Stanley Cavell and Lucy Sprague Mitchell on language learning. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 31, 327–338. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. The Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd. Freire, P. (2005). Teachers as cultural workers: Letter to those who dare to teach. Westview Press. Heidegger, M. (1971). …Poetically man dwells…. In M. Heidegger (Ed.), Poetry, language, thought (A. Hofstadter, Trans.), (pp. 211–229). Harper & Row. hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. Routledge. hooks, b. (2000). All about love: New visions. . hooks, b. (2003). Teaching community: A pedagogy of hope. Routledge.

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Le Capharnaüm 2.0. (2022, December 18). The word that makes a better place [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/Ebb272kjmWQ Lorde, A. (1984). Sister outsider: Essays & speeches. Crossing Press. Mouffe, C. (1994). For a politics of nomadic identity. In G.  Robertson (Ed.), Travellers’ tales: Narratives of home and displacement (pp. 105–113). Routledge. Nolan, C. (Director). (2014). Interstellar. Paramount. RECE. (2023, May 8). https://receinternational.org/standing-­in-­solidarity-­ with-­us-­early-­childhood-­educators-­against-­racism-­and-­heterosexism/ Ruíz Guerero, M. G., & Pérez, M. S. (in press). Snack time: The “both/and” of an in-between praxis. In C. M. Myers, R. Hostler, K. Smith, & M. Tesar (Eds.), Every/day: Conceptualizing a mundane early childhood praxis. Routledge.

Index1

A Abjection, 66–68, 70 Affective, 7, 17, 68 Agency, 30, 31, 36, 64, 105, 112, 122, 187–189, 205 Agentic, 63, 71 Anzaldua, G.E., ix, 98, 101 Arizona, 98, 99, 103, 109–111, 114 Asylum seekers, 95, 106 Australia, 62, 65, 185, 187 B Barad, Karen, ix, 28, 64, 66, 68, 70, 71, 127, 187, 190 Bauman, S., 65, 66 Bedouin, 19, 77, 87 Border Crit methodologies, 97–99 Border Crit theory, ix, 19, 96–99, 102 Borderlands, viii, 19, 95–114

Braidotti, Rosi, ix, 3, 4, 62–64, 67, 69, 71, 103, 104, 119, 122, 127, 128, 186, 188, 189, 200, 202 C Caravan, 17, 160, 162, 165, 173n1, 200–202 Care, viii, 2–5, 8, 13, 16, 17, 21, 25–30, 32, 33, 37, 39, 44, 45, 55, 64, 67, 78, 106, 107, 126, 152, 157, 178, 182, 184, 185, 187, 190, 199–209 Child development, 9, 32, 187 Children’s rights, 76, 78, 97 Children’s views and voices, 100 Closing the gap, 183, 184 Colonization, 3, 8, 14, 15, 19, 76, 77, 79, 80, 83–86, 88, 89, 89n1, 98 Concrete hope, 180

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

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INDEX

Corporatisation, 185 Counter-narratives, 96, 97, 99, 109 Covid-19, 8, 54, 117, 178, 179, 187 Criminalization, 18, 19, 75–89, 96, 104, 155 Critical Race Theory (CRT), 96–98 Curriculum, 5, 7, 10, 14–16, 26, 27, 29, 32, 33, 36, 39, 40, 49–51, 64, 67, 136, 137, 139, 141, 148n2, 201–203 D Declaration of the Rights of the Child, 78 Deconstruction, 17, 18, 25–40, 102, 202 Deligny, Ferdinand, 17, 20, 191 Derrida, Jacques, 18, 26–38, 40, 127, 202 Development, 5, 10–12, 15, 16, 25, 27, 29, 31, 49, 76–79, 84–86, 88, 102, 104, 109, 120, 137, 156, 173n2, 181, 182, 184, 185, 190 Developmentally appropriate practice, 178 Diffraction, 66, 70 Directivity, 189 Discrimination, 3, 14, 39, 49, 51, 52, 76, 96, 103, 104, 113, 156, 170, 201 Diversity, 3, 12, 16, 32, 45, 46, 48–54, 56, 57, 63–65, 152, 178, 201 E Ethics, viii, 27, 35, 67, 188 European Commission, 63, 181, 182 European Union (EU), 169, 181, 184

F Family, 3, 7, 9–15, 31, 34, 36, 37, 44, 46–51, 53, 55, 56, 62, 76, 78, 85, 87, 96, 97, 101, 104–106, 108–112, 120, 123–125, 127, 128, 137, 139–143, 153, 155, 158–160, 162–164, 170, 172, 190, 201, 204 Feminist, 64, 66, 71, 186, 190 Foreigner, 18, 34, 62, 65, 67–69, 71, 202 Foster care, 105 Freire, Paulo, ix, 180, 189, 202, 205, 207, 209 Froebel, Friedrich, 10, 190, 191 G Genetics, 86 Global Capitalism, 6 Government, 5, 6, 8, 9, 15, 68, 80, 83, 84, 86, 87, 98, 102–105, 167 H Habitus, 111 Health, 5, 10, 11, 54, 78, 79, 87, 105, 125, 153, 154, 156, 159, 161, 167, 168, 170 Homeless, 7, 51, 53, 55, 70, 125, 159, 201 hooks, b., 20, 107, 137, 138, 141, 142, 146, 147, 203 Hospitality, viii, 18, 26, 28, 30, 31, 33–40, 65, 202 Human Capital Theory, 184, 185 Human rights, 50, 76, 86, 89n4, 96–102, 113, 114, 173n2

 INDEX 

I Identity, 4, 8, 39, 46, 49, 62, 66, 79, 85, 88, 96, 98, 101–104, 107–109, 111, 112, 118, 120–123, 127, 128, 141, 144, 155, 156, 167, 205 Indigenous, 14, 62, 80, 96–99, 113, 114, 140, 148n1, 153, 167, 178, 190 International Large-scale Standardised Assessments (ILSAs), 179 Ireland, 152, 154–156, 160, 168, 202 Irish Human Rights Commission, 156 J Justice, 26, 27, 29, 30, 35 K Kristeva, Julie, 18, 62, 65–71, 202 L Latino/a Critical Race Theory, 97 Lifelong learning, 182 Liminality, 101 Liquid modernity, 65 Love, 18, 43, 50, 66–68, 110, 141, 144, 152, 161, 199–209 M Marginalization, 14, 151, 153, 167, 201 Markets, 9, 37, 96, 111, 185 Marx, Karl, 10, 191 Mental health, 87, 153, 154, 156, 159, 161, 167, 168, 170 Middle East, 77 Migration, 34, 65, 96, 98–103, 107, 111, 117, 128, 200, 201 Mincéir, 153, 157–158

213

Mississippi, 106, 109, 113 Mobility, 12, 95, 99, 103, 104, 112, 201 More-than-human, 64–66, 68, 69 Mothers, 10, 11, 78, 86, 106, 108–110, 112–114, 134, 139, 141, 143, 144, 159, 164, 166 N Neoliberal, 15, 16, 66, 179, 181, 186, 187 Nomadic peoples, 77 Nomadic theory, 4, 96, 103, 104, 107 Nomadism, 20, 103, 152, 154–156, 160, 200 O The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), 6, 178, 179, 181, 182, 185–187 Other, 31, 32, 34, 35, 39, 61–63, 65, 67, 69–71 Outsider, 45, 65 Owen, Robert, 9 P Palestine, 77, 80–84, 89n2, 202 Parent, 4, 8–10, 13, 19, 20, 37, 38, 44, 51, 55, 56, 84, 86, 97, 104–107, 109, 112, 124, 172, 190, 200, 201 Pavee Point Traveller and Roma Center, 156, 173n2 Play, 7, 10, 12, 27, 31, 35, 45, 47, 48, 89, 97, 105–107, 122, 126, 138, 145, 190, 201 Posthuman, 62, 63, 71, 123, 186, 190 Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), 86

214 

INDEX

Poverty, vii, 81, 104, 105, 108, 133, 182–184, 188 Professional, 27, 29, 30, 40, 49, 64, 146, 157, 188, 208 Property, 3, 5, 11, 14, 15, 17, 36, 38, 98, 154, 155 Q Quality, 7, 9, 13, 25, 26, 28, 79, 173n2, 182, 183, 185, 199 R Racism, 48, 50, 97, 137, 152, 153, 155, 167 Refugees, 19, 77, 79, 82, 84, 85, 88, 95, 106, 140 Revolt, 66, 68–70 Roe v. Wade, 99, 114 Romantic, 9, 10, 14, 126, 205 S Scholar activism, 96, 99 Security, viii, 8, 35, 75, 77–80, 83, 85, 87, 113, 120, 201 Semiotic, 66–68 Sisterhood, 207 Social justice, viii, 49, 51, 54, 96, 99, 114, 119, 152, 173n2, 180, 202, 203 Storytelling, 107–112, 136, 156, 202 Subject, 3, 4, 9, 16, 27, 62, 63, 66–71, 83, 87, 100, 102, 108, 121, 183 Subjectivity, 5, 32, 34, 35, 62, 64, 68–70, 104, 122, 123 T Te Tiriti o Waitangi, 15 Te Whāriki, 15, 16, 27, 32, 33, 39, 40, 136, 137, 139, 141, 148n2

Teacher, vii, 4, 12–14, 18, 20, 26, 27, 29–33, 36, 38–40, 46, 48–52, 54, 61–71, 106, 126, 142, 189, 201–203, 208 Teacher education, 39, 40, 51 Teaching, 6, 26, 30, 36, 40, 49, 62, 147, 201, 205, 206 Transborder, viii, 96, 101, 103, 107–113 Traveller, 20, 151–172, 202 Tribal Critical Race Theory, 97 U United Kingdom, 185 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), 14, 156 United States (US), 19, 95–99, 101–106, 109, 110, 124, 138, 185, 187, 202, 203, 207 Urban, ix, 9, 15, 51, 81, 119, 120, 123 V Vagabonds efficaces, 17, 177–191 Vulnerability, 67, 71, 86, 105, 111 W War, 76, 82, 133, 140 Well-being/wellbeing, 54, 78, 79, 88, 97, 114, 118, 125, 137, 139, 140, 145, 148n2, 153, 203 Women, 10, 46, 86, 99, 107, 108, 114, 137, 140, 148n3, 151, 152, 156, 157, 159, 161, 165, 170, 172, 206, 207 Workforce, 103 World Bank, 178, 181, 182, 186 X Xenophobia, 97