| dc.description.abstract | This thesis seeks to challenge deficit approaches to ‘different’ childhoods. It does
this through documenting the everyday life experiences of Sylheti-heritage Muslim
children in urban Scotland, and reading these childhoods through the lives of
children and their kin in rural Sylhet, Bangladesh. The research is based on 3 years’
ethnographic fieldwork (January 2008-February 2011), in Scotland and in
Bangladesh, and incorporates various child-friendly creative research methods used
to elicit data on children’s realities and perspectives on their lives. These data are
supplemented by data from the children’s mothers (and occasionally wider family) in
both locations.
Transnational migration between the Indian subcontinent and the UK is not new, but
little research has focused on childhoods, in particular the lived experiences of young
Muslim children of marriage-migrant mothers in Scotland, where this minority
ethnic ‘community’ is quite small, later-formed and largely invisible. Little early
childhood research has been conducted on children’s everyday lives either in rural
Sylhet or in Scotland. The history and context of migration and the realities of
children’s lives in Scotland, as migrant-heritage Muslim children, are largely
unexplored and their particular needs are little understood. Some media and public
imaginaries and discourses portray Muslim families and their communities as
‘problematic’, increasingly so since September 11th, 2001, with recent events in the
UK, mainland Europe and the Middle East adding fuel to such sentiments. Many
Sylheti-heritage families experience harassment and abuse, or live in fear of such
eventualities, and the women and young children in my Scottish cohort have largely
withdrawn for safety from the visible public domain.
This research aims to contribute to a body of knowledge on early childhood(s). Early
childhood interventions are high on Scotland’s, and the UK’s, policy agendas. These
policies aim to create better futures and greater inclusiveness for all residents, but
they are problematic for families that do not match the very Euro-American middle-class
conceptions of childhood and family norms that inform policy. Despite the
introduction of strengths-based models in family and childhood policy and practice,
such ‘different’ children and families may still be viewed from a deficits perspective.
Such deficit discourses may be rooted in a language of cultural deprivation and
special needs, focusing on perceived deficiencies, resulting in the pathologising of
certain groups, which become normalised over time. The global Early Years’ agenda
is also reflected in interventions in rural Bangladesh, with imported global ideals and
norms of which most village families have no knowledge and which bear little
relevance to their everyday lives. For example, many interventions exist for early
childhood in the form of pre-school and nursery provision, but many are based on
very Eurocentric models of childhood, which although pertinent in the Global North
may not ‘fit’ with the realities of life for most rural children and their families. There
is an over-emphasis on children’s futures and children as ‘becomings’, the future
citizens they will become, rather than on their quality of life here and now as
‘beings’.
This thesis frames children’s everyday lives in terms of ‘domains’: places of
childhood (locations of children’s day-to-day activities), ‘networks’: spaces of
childhood (social networks and relationships with kin and friends); and
‘preoccupations’: pursuits of childhood (how they spend their lives and what
meaning, if any, they attach to these different aspects of life). The gendered character
of these experiences is highlighted throughout. Children’s lives, particularly when
young, are influenced and shaped by their kin, yet opportunities for agency also
exist. When women migrate after marriage from Sylhet to Scotland, some aspects of
childhood and family lives remain fairly constant while others change quite radically.
For instance, whilst children’s lives continue to be centred on close family, family
may be much smaller and less accessible than in Sylhet. Concepts of house and
neighbourhood continue to be important, but Sylheti village childhoods are largely
spent outdoors, whilst children are largely restricted to the family home in Scotland;
children’s physical domains of activity diminish and women and children have few
opportunities to connect socially beyond their existing family networks, particularly
in the early years. Social life, very rich and foregrounded in Sylheti villages,
becomes potentially more restricted in Scotland although women work hard to create
and maintain social opportunities and networks in Scotland, with wider Diasporic
kin, and the Sylheti villages to which they have connections. Through their
representations and narratives, both drawn and spoken, children convey rich
examples of their childhood experiences, in both locales, which challenge deficit
discourses on ‘different childhoods’. | en |
