Spatial perspectives on babies’ ways of belonging in infant early childhood education and care

Abstract

Abstract In this article, we endeavour to think spatially about the texture of infants’ everyday lives and their ways of ‘doing’ belonging in the babies’ room in an Australian early childhood education and care centre. Drawing on data from a large, multiple case-study project, and on theorisations of space that reject Euclidean notions of space as empty, transparent, relatively inert containers into which people, objects practices and artefacts are inserted, and instead emphasise space as complex, dynamic and relational, we map the navigating movements (Massumi, 2002) of baby Nadia. Through the telling of ‘stories-so-far’ (Massey, 2005), we convey how Nadia, as part of a constellation or assemblage of human and non-human beings, found ways to intensify space and to mobilise new vantage points, thus expanding the spatial possibilities of what we initially took to be a particularly confined and confining space.