Transitions in the Ecology of the Infrastructure of ``Cared-for Childhood''

Abstract

Currently, transition research often has a narrow scope irrespective of its institutional and organizational theory. This implies an instrumental understanding of transitions, in which mainly phrases like ``transition management'', ``transition counselling'', ``cooperation'' or ``educational partnership'' occur. Transition is thus reduced to a matching between organizational entities. As a result, the organizational work of producing transitions within the infrastructure of `cared-for childhood' (Honig, 2011) and the associated pedagogical and social implications are rarely considered. Within this context, this paper proposes to theoretically conceptualize transitions in an updated socio-ecological perspective as boundary objects of infrastructures and thus as phenomena that are relationally produced and processed. The field of all-day child care is used as an example.