The project investigates how kindergarten practices at the time of entry for the youngest children (0-2 years) influence how children and families with migrant and minority-language backgrounds are included.
The transition to kindergarten can mark the first sustained encounter between migrant families and Norwegian education and welfare systems, introducing institutional everyday life to children and their parents.
These early encounters can become key moments of inclusion, but also enable social, cultural, linguistic, and institutional forms of exclusion, as access to kindergarten does not in itself amount to inclusion.
Policy and statistics register enrolment and coverage in kindergarten, but do not capture how different migration and language-related trajectories shape inclusion needs, nor how transition practices can enable trust and participation.
Thus, applying the notion of thresholds of inclusion – a metaphor of physical separation, but also a conceptualization of intense zones of inside-outside negotiation – TRANSIT asks: How do early transition practices create, lower, or reinforce thresholds of inclusion for children under three and families with migrant and minority-language backgrounds?
To address this, the project will:
- trace descriptions of and circumstances for under-three children and families across a variety of immigrant and minority-language groups, seeking to understand their particular needs in relation to inclusion;
- gather a sample of transition practices to identify social, material, linguistic and institutional thresholds of inclusion-exclusion for these groups; and
- develop a methodological framework for further studies.
The project will employ a literature review, an ethnographic pilot study and a dissemination workshop. Its findings will inform both further research and professional practice.
