From compliance to refusal: White childhoods and abolitionist imaginaries in early childhood education and care

Duha Ceylan; Tuba Bircan; Michel Vandenbroeck

doi:10.37291/2717638X.202563649

Authors

Duha Ceylan Vrije Universiteit Brussel https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4782-8070
Tuba Bircan Vrije Universiteit Brussel https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1956-0545
Michel Vandenbroeck Ghent University https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1448-1047

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.37291/2717638X.202563649

Keywords:

Post-colonial, Migration, Abolition, Racialization

Abstract

This paper introduces the concept of white childhoods as a critical framework to examine how whiteness, coloniality, and racial capitalism shape early childhood education and care systems in Europe. Dominant norms of childhood, rooted in white, middle-class, heteronormative, and non-disabled ideals, structure how children are seen as emotionally legible, developmentally "normal," and worthy of institutional care. Racialized and migrant children are often positioned as deficient, with their languages, cultural practices, and family structures rendered unintelligible or threatening. Drawing on in-depth interviews with Syrian mothers and ethnographic observations across Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands, the paper maps how white childhoods are enforced through language policy, affective expectations, and maternal surveillance. Beyond critique, the paper uses short speculative vignettes to explore abolitionist futures in which care is collective, multilingualism is embraced, and belonging is not conditional. These speculative fragments are grounded in the lived experiences and quiet refusals voiced by migrant mothers, treating imagination as both method and political strategy. Rather than seeking inclusion or reform, the paper calls for dismantling the racialized logics of early childhood education and care and for building educational spaces grounded in relationality, cultural sovereignty, and joy. Abolition here is framed not as utopian idealism but as a pedagogical and methodological commitment to living otherwise.

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