Abstract
AbstractThis article looks at young children's mobility practices in public spaces within the context of a mobile preschool practice (i.e., a preschool in a bus), with a specific focus on how materialities matter in children's mobilities. Using ethnographic data from a mobile preschool, we argue that the mobile preschool group's mobility should be understood in terms of collective embodiment and the mobile preschool should be viewed as a movingcollective bodyin public space through which children can negotiate their own mobility practices and exercise agency. We show how this collective body is constituted through an assemblage and collaboration of children's and teachers' bodies and material objects. Collective embodiment not only enables and supports children's mobilities in public space but also helps young children to appropriate and claim their democratic right to public space through the visible copresence of bodies and things.
Highlights
Due to the highly institutionalised character of childhood, young children usually spend their days within the spatial confines of the home, preschool building, or yard and are largely absent from public space
We argue that the mobile preschool group's mobility should be understood in terms of collective embodiment and the mobile preschool should be viewed as a moving collective body in public space
Mobile preschool children's mobility practices differ from the mobility practices of children in “regular,” “stationary,” preschools, since children in the latter preschools usually spend most of their days within the confines of the preschool, indoors, and outdoors in the preschool yard, with only occasional visits to spaces outside the preschool for play or educational activities
Summary
Due to the highly institutionalised character of childhood, young children usually spend their days within the spatial confines of the home, preschool building, or yard and are largely absent from public space. Collective, and embodied character of these recurrent movements and moorings of the children's bodies, we observed that the mobile preschool children's mobility practice of walking in line is supported by a composition of and collaboration between the children's and teachers' bodies.
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