This paper addresses the well-being of children in Switzerland, Canada and Estonia, as they experienced the lockdown imposed by governments after the state of international public health emergency, declared by the World Health Organization on 30 January 2020. Suspension of school or starting with distance learning, cessation of extracurricular activities, closure of playgrounds, parks, shopping centres and loss of daily contacts with friends completely transformed children’s lives. The surveys conducted by the authors in individual ways, were all inspired by their membership to the Children’s Understandings of Well-Being network and involved the participation of 403 children aged 7–17 years old (229 girls and 174 boys). They present the emerging trends from the children’s narratives focusing on their experience of the lockdown in relation to family life, school life, contacts with friends, and in relation to space, time and self. During the lockdown leisure activities and hobbies, followed by life with friends and school life challenged relational well-being the most, while family life opened up new perspectives and generational solidarity. Staying at home and decreased physical activity impacted on the physical health of children, missing direct contacts with friends and teachers put social relations to test, fear of the virus decreased feeling safe and secure, and the lockdown restricted participation in society. The findings underline the relational nature of their well-being. More in-depth studies are needed to highlight the widening of inequalities and the balance between protection and participation of children.
Analogously to the works in the field of new social studies of childhood, this contribution deals with the concept of childhood as a social construction, in which children are considered as social actors in their own living environment, engaged in interpretive reproduction of the social. In this perspective the concept of agency is strongly stressed, and the vulnerability of children is not sufficiently taken into account. But in combining vulnerability and agency lies the possibility to consider the perspective of the subjects in the context of their social, political and cultural embeddedness. In this paper we show that what children say, what is important to them in general and for their well-being, is shaped by the care experiences within the family and by their social contexts. The argumentation for the intertwining of vulnerability and agency is exemplified by the expressions of an interviewed girl about her birth and by reference to philosophical concepts about birth and natality.
Grenzen haben symbolische und soziale Bedeutung, reproduzieren durch moralisierende Zuschreibungen soziale Ungleichheiten und generieren Ein-und Ausschlüsse bestimmter Personen(gruppen). Grenzen bzw. eine grenzanalytische Perspektive sind für die Sozialpädagogik deshalb relevant, weil sie Aufschluss geben über normative Ordnungsvorstellungen sowie die eigene sozialpädagogische Beteiligung hieran. Normative Ordnungen ziehen Grenzen zwischen krisenhaftem Sein und idealem Sollen und bringen soziale Wirklichkeiten hervor. Durch so konstituierte Grenzverhältnisse von Wirklichkeit und Möglichkeit lassen sich auch empirisch Grenzziehungen rekonstruieren, die Ein-und Ausschlüsse hervorbringen. Dies wird im Artikel exemplarisch für die sozialpädagogische Handlungspraxis herausgearbeitet und normative Ordnungen von "guter" und "schlechter" Elternschaft rekonstruiert.
Constitution of boundaries as practices of inclusion and exclusionAbstract: Boundaries have symbolic and social meaning, reproduce social inequalities via moralizing ascriptions and generate in-and exclusions of specific (groups of) persons. Boundaries resp. a boundary analytic perspective are relevant for Social Work in so far, as they shed light on normative conceptions of order and the own involvement of Social Work within these processes. Normative orders draw boundaries between a critical be and an ideal should-be, they create social realities. By these constituted boundary relations of reality and possibility, empiric
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