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ABSTRACT
Among asylum seekers in the EU, many are families with young children (0–4 years). In policy and practice, however, these children remain invisible. During the asylum proceedings, which can take quite some time, there is hardly any pedagogical offer available in reception centres nor are there clear policies to guarantee accessible, useful and meaningful ECEC. While there is ample evidence of the possible benefits of high quality ECEC, especially for vulnerable groups, these children often do not attend any ECEC provision. This article addresses this issue, by reporting on the results from the Erasmus+ Project ‘MyRef’, Multilingual Early Childhood Education and Care for Young Refugee Children (01/10/2016–31/05/2019) carried on in Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway and the United Kingdom. One of the main findings of the project was the almost complete lack of specific policy or attention for this group of young children and their families. In research as well, the very youngest refugee children have not been a topic of attention as such. In this article, we want to raise awareness on this group of children and their right to access to high quality ECEC.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 Professor of Political Geography and Geopolitics, Radboud University & Professor of Border Studies, University of Eastern Finland. Co-founder and coordinator Nijmegen Centre for Border Research (www.ru.nl/ncbr).
2 The project is called ‘MyRef’, Multi-lingual Early Childhood Education and Care for Young Refugee Children (01/10/2016–31/05/2019). It was coordinated by Sardes (NL) and project partners were VBJK (B), Cambridge University (UK) and Oslo Metropolitan University college (NW). All info and results can be found on www.sardes.nl/MyREF
3 All country reports including references and list of interviewees can be found on https://sardes.nl/myref
4 In ‘Current migration situation in the EU: Education’, the EU Fundamental Rights Agency (Citation2017) reported numbers of refugee children in ECEC for only 9 member states (none of them project countries). In this report, the FRA (Citation2017) states that ‘these data are not collected systematically and may refer to different groups of persons, specific regions within member states or specific times’.
5 Kind en Gezin is the public agency responsible for basic provision, such as childcare and family support services.
7 An example was mentioned where a 3 year old girl had moved six times already in a very short span of time.
8 Other examples, including those in the UK and Norway, can be consulted on https://sardes.nl/myref
9 A similar conclusion was drawn by Jackson (Citation2006) in a small research on playgroups for refugee parents and children (p. 5): ‘ … it was evident that the time they spent at this playgroup was happy and stress-free and that the environment fostered a sense of community and social inclusion which resulted in major social and emotional benefits’.
11 To be viewed and downloaded on https://sardes.nl/myref
12 ‘Children have the right to affordable early childhood education and care of good quality … Children from disadvantaged backgrounds have the right to specific measures to enhance equal opportunities’.