Social Sustainability in Children with Migrant Backgrounds’ Belonging: Setting up the

Backgrounds’ Belonging: Setting up the Research Question

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Transforming Our World not only claimed migrants as vulnerable, but the declaration also recognised the positive contribution of migrants for inclusive growth and sustainable development in the countries they migrate to (UN, 2015, p. 29). Hannah Arendt’s (Arendt, 1943) essay We Refugees problematised the use of the terms ‘refugees’ and ‘immigrants’ as she described how the term ‘refugee’ had changed from being associated with persons driven to seek refuge due to political opinions or acts committed to address people who had had the misfortune to arrive in new countries without means and were in need of help from the Refugee Committees. Immigrants, or ‘newcomers’, on the other hand, were ordinary people who had left their countries of their own free will (1943, p. 110). Implicitly, being an independent ‘newcomer’ or immigrant was perceived as preferable to being a refugee in need of help. As this particular essay was written by Arendt in exile during the second world war, the complexity of the conceptual use of terms such as

‘refugee’, ‘immigrant’, ‘migrant’, or ‘asylum seeker’ is still valid. So is the complexity in the

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persons’ – every man, woman, and child’s – situations and rights in their new countries. The loss of national rights does not implicate the loss of human rights.

In her later book The Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt (1951) stated that when belonging to the communities in which one is born is no longer a matter of course, and not belonging not a matter of choice, something much more fundamental than freedom and justice is at stake, namely, a person’s human rights. Arendt outlined this further as the rights to have rights to action, to opinion, and to belong to some kind of organised community (Arendt, 1951, p. 388). Drawing on Arendt, Norwegian professor Helgard Mahrdt (Mahrdt, 2015) highlighted the role of education in general in order to meet the ongoing refugee and migrant crises among other caused by the Syrian civil war. Mahrdt drew attention to the importance of encouraging young people to understand and take into account the perspectives of others, to include ‘newcomers’, and to recover solidarity (2015, p. 23).

The report Migration in the 2030 Agenda, published by the International Organization for Migration, explored the links between migration and the Sustainable Development Goals.

The report used the term ‘migrant children’ and stated that there is no one homogenous profile of the ‘migrant child’ (Migration in the 2013 Agenda, 2017, p. 130). Although the report’s chapter on migrant children’s situations mainly focused on unaccompanied refugee children travelling alone, I perceive the report’s highlighting of the role of the Sustainable

Development Goals to improve migrant children’s situations as relevant in the context of my study. Addressing questions of social inclusion and exclusion in the diverse Swedish social community, Magnus Dahlstedt et.al (2017) stated the issue of ‘belonging’ as one of the most pressing issues in today’s increasingly diverse Europe (2017, p. 202). As expressed by Ärlemalm-Hagsèr and Sandberg (2011, p. 198), educators face a general dilemma in the challenge of not knowing what children need to know to be able to meet a future of change.

However, history has repeatedly taught us that living in a democracy is not to be taken for granted. Even in Norway, with our stable society and solid democratic traditions, severe attacks on democracy have taken place in recent times. In 2011, and most recently in 2019, lives have been lost due to right-wing terrorists’ desire to force through a non-democratic social order, claiming people with migrant and refugee backgrounds as ‘non-belonging’ to the Norwegian society. Social sustainability issues concerning children with migrant

backgrounds’ belonging to their new communities and societies has thus grown to be a pressing early childhood sustainability issue to research.

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The UN agenda Transforming Our World (UN, 2015) as well as The World

Organization of Early Childhood Education, OMEP (Declaration of the 68th OMEP World Assembly and Conference: Seoul, Korea, July 2016), has highlighted migrant and refugee children’s vulnerability in the double sense, identifying social exclusion as a potential risk.

Children with migrant backgrounds have only recently become visible within studies on migrants’ situations (Hunner-Kreisel & Bohne, 2016, p. 4); however, they have both the right and the responsibility to contribute to the community in which they grow up (Migration in the 2013 Agenda, 2017).

In general, recent research on the complexity of children with migrant and refugee backgrounds’ belonging (David & Kilderry, 2019; Kalkman & Clark, 2017; Mitchell &

Bateman, 2018), well-being (Hunner-Kreisel & Bohne, 2016), participation (Picchio &

Mayer, 2019; Sadownik, 2018), and experience with social struggles and exclusion (Kalkman, Hopperstad, & Valenta, 2017) is growing in the Norwegian as well as the Nordic and

international early childhood research context. To the best of my knowledge, though, investigating children with migrant backgrounds’ meaning making of ‘belonging’ in kindergarten, as an aspect and research topic explicitly in the context of early childhood education for sustainability, has not been prioritised, neither in the Norwegian nor in the international early childhood research context (Boldermo & Ødegaard, 2019).

One of the conclusions that was drawn in the report Migration in the 2030 agenda was that the Sustainable Development Goals can contribute to the incorporation of migration in global and national policies. To illuminate children with migrant background’s situations in such contexts would contribute to the fulfilment of their rights and abilities to contribute to their new communities (Migration in the 2013 Agenda, 2017). I perceive this in relation to children’s rights in accordance with the UN convention on the Rights of the Child (UNICEF, 1989) and in the context of Arendt’s conceptualisations of the rights to have rights to action, to opinion, and, in particular, to belong⁸ (Arendt, 1951). Although they are as different and individual as all children, children with migrant backgrounds’ rights to have rights, and to

8 I make a reservation that, by ‘right to belong’, I do not, in the context of this study, associate this with civic rights such as rights to citizenship, which according to James D. Ingram (Ingram, 2008) is a usual conceptualisation of this phrase of Arendt. The concept of belonging is outlined in chapter two, in which section 2.5, in particular, positions the concept of belonging in the study.

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belonging in particular, cannot be overlooked in an era where ongoing consequences of climate change, international migration, and globalisation are evident.

Specifically, the study asks: How can early childhood education for social sustainability be understood through children with migrant backgrounds’ meaning making of belonging in kindergarten?