The modern child and the flexible labour market:
Institutionalisation and individualisation of children in the light of changes in the
welfare state
Norsk senter for barneforskning,
NTNU 7491 Trondheim
Telephone: 73 59 62 40
Fax: 73 59 62 39
E-post: noseb@svt.ntnu.no
2. Flexibility, user-orientation, and quality: children as participants and users
Flexibility is currently nothing peculiar for the labour market. In a neo-liberal era it is widely making its
way into conventional public regimes, and day-care centres are no exception from this. The project is
divided into two parts: the level of day-care policy and the level of daily life within day-care institutions.
The main focus is on children as participants in day-care institutions in the light of ideological changes
in the welfare state and day-care policy from mid 1990s, mentioned above. The aim is to generate
research based knowledge of how recent political discourses on flexibility, user-orientation and
individual choice affect professional practices and children’s possibilities to be active social
participants in day care institutions. A core issue is to study the social practices and relations that are
developed by children and professionals in the institutions with regards to discourses on ‘free play’ and
children’s rights to make own choices and decide for themselves on the one hand, and ideas of care,
solidarity and community on the other. Taking into account that Norway is a multiethnic society, it will
be of particular interest to get knowledge about how these discourses affect children from ethnic
minority groups. Do children from these groups get into marginalised positions within day care centres
or are they included as active participants in the every day life within the institutions?
According to neo-liberal trends in the welfare state, citizenship does not seem to be connected to
solidarity, security and welfare in a community, but are turned into questions about the subject’s
individual ‘free choice’ and self-realisation (Edwards 2000).
An important part of the project is to explore if and, in case, how notions of children as subjects and
active social participants are affected and changed through these market-oriented discourses. To what
degree are the individual child’s right to be autonomous and decide for him/herself promoted by
professional practices at the expense of participation in communities of care and solidarity? An
important task of the sub-project is to connect the study of social practices within institutions with
analyses of day-care policy in order to identify different positions and interests that are embedded in
this policy. The topic will therefore be studied on three different empirical levels: 1) the political level:
discourse analyses of texts connected to the Developmental program (1995-1997), the ‘Quality
Reform’ (2001-2003) and ‘Stortingsmeldinger’; 2) the practices and perspectives of the day-care staff
(ethnographic approach); and 3) children as participants within institutions (ethnographic approach
and narrative interviews). On all these three levels, a focus on marginalisation and inclusion (as for
instance gender and ethnicity) will be included in the analyses.
Using ethnographic methods in two day-care institutions, narrative interviews with children 3-6 years
and discourse analyses, the focus of project 2 will be on situations and phenomena (e.g. conflicts,
daily routines, unusual events) where traditional welfare-ideologies of care and learning meet the new
individualistic, consumer-oriented ideologies of individual choice. The prime focus will be a) how
children conceptualise, use and negotiate the new identities at hand, b) the social practices that are
developed in the mix of new and old values of individualisation, self realisation, care, solidarity and
‘free play’.
Children’s practices are however closely connected to professional practices and discourses. The
ambivalent character of market orientation in a welfare sphere will also be considered. While some
children may be empowered as customers, users and choice-makers, i.e. as persons to be taken
seriously, there is an imminent risk of sacrificing other children who for one reason or another do not
dispose of options to choose at all. This adds up to reconstructing new social divisions often centred
on older, traditional divisions of class, race, age and gender (Edwards 2000). Children from ethnic
minorities will be of particular interest in this context. To what degree are they included as active
participants in play and peer-cultural communities? Do discourses on children as active participants
and choice makers, and the daily practices that are developed within the institutions, include all
children or are some children marginalised? If they are, to what degree is ethnicity a basis for new
social divisions? On the other hand, the new context of the child as user and choice-maker, may
promote children’s participation in various ways. As a main area of children's rights, participation is
articulated in the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child and supposed to be the very basis for every
society's child policy. It will be explored if participation do promote children's social inclusion and
thereby prevent some of the divisions mentioned above (e.g. Alderson 1999). Hence, project 2 is a
theoretical and empirical contribution to contemporary discourses on children and participation.
References
Alderson, P. (2000): Young children's rights: exploring beliefs, principles and practice. London:
Kingsley.
Edwards, T (2000): Contradictions of Consumption. Concepts, Practices and Politics in Consumer
Society. Buckingham,Philadelphia: Open University Press.