Conference Agenda

This symposium examines the role of local governance in steering, shaping, and supporting Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) systems. Across Europe, municipalities carry crucial responsibilities in the steering of the everyday practices of childcare providers. As local authorities not only influence the accessibility, affordability, and quality development of ECEC but also shape the structures of general provision — such as the local balance between centre-based and home-based care or their connectedness with other infrastructures (e.g. public transport) — their steering is key to the everyday maintenance of unequal ECEC landscapes (e.g, van de Kuilen et al. 2023, Carlbaum et al. 2024). However, policy-related studies in ECEC still tend to address more on the national or state level.

In the context of a general trend towards shifting responsibilities in welfare, youth services and education to the local level, municipalities face increasing steering challenges, while growing demands for professionalism and quality development in ECEC coexist with bureaucratic pressures, scarce resources and, in some cases, divergent understandings of the municipal role. Moreover, local steering capacities are not only shaped by demographic change, labour shortages and shifting family and childcare policies, but also emerge within heterogenous multi-actor and multi-level networks in which policies and services are jointly shaped through formal and informal interactions (Klijn et al. 2025).

Against this backdrop, the symposium adopts a cultural and sociological theoretical lens on local governance that understands it as a situated and relational process in which rules, responsibilities and meanings, are continuously produced through everyday interactions and negotiations among local authorities, public and independent providers, social services, users and community actors (Bevir and Rhodes 2010), and, thus, enfolds across different institutional settings and spaces, rather than being confined to individual childcare services. The presentations collected in this symposium will from diverse methodological and theoretical perspectives elaborate on how local governance is in this ways “lived” in practice and how it shapes – and is shaped by – the everyday experiences and actions of educators, families and children within dynamic and contested local policy environments.

Against this background, the three conference contributions present empirical studies from municipalities in Germany, Finland and Luxembourg. Together, they analyse how local ECEC governance arrangements are negotiated and reconfigured in contexts of austerity, demographic change, labour shortages and shifting family and childcare policies. The individual contributions show how local actor constellations respond to these challenges and power dynamics in different ways and how such processes of adaptation, tension and de- and re-stabilisation contribute to the emergence of distinct local trajectories of ECEC systems. Together, the papers of this symposium allow for a comparative, multiperspective dialogue on the role of municipalities in ECEC system – and the role of ECEC for municipalities as well. The symposium focuses on two crosscutting thematic questions:

1. How do historical trajectories and regional characteristics produce and shape local ECEC governance structures?

1. How does assembled governance shape the lived realities of children and families?

This symposium will advance theoretical and empirical dialogues on how histories and spaces intertwine in shaping local systems, and how ECEC governance unfolds. Through a multi-perspective lens, the symposium positions local authorities not merely as administrative units but as key agents in the continuous assembly of early childhood education and care.

This presentation adopts a comparative governance perspective on family day care (FDC) in Germany and Luxembourg. Drawing on qualitative case studies from multiple research projects – including interviews and ethnographic observations – it analyzes how locally embedded governance arrangements shape the positioning and everyday enactment of FDC within municipal early childhood education and care (ECEC) landscapes. In both countries, FDC is crucial for meeting European ECEC expansion targets, particularly for children under three, and is formally recognized as an equivalent provision. However, it operates within distinct multi-level governance structures in the child and youth sector (Klinkhammer & Scholz 2022; Honig et al. 2015). In Germany, steering largely rests with over 560 local youth welfare offices, resulting in considerable local variation in procedures across regulatory areas like working conditions, remuneration, licensing, and support. Even neighboring municipalities exhibit different arrangements despite similar legal frameworks (e.g., Schoyerer, Ihm & Bach 2021). Luxembourg, conversely, features a highly decentralized, quasi-market-oriented ECEC system (Honig et al. 2015). While national regulations provide the framework, local market conditions, demographics, and infrastructure significantly influence the organization and positioning of FDC. Building on welfare, care, and governance theories (Thelen & Coe 2019; Bollig 2025; Gallego, Motos & Maestripieri 2024), the presentation examines how the relatively low institutionalization of FDC in both countries and its openness to local dynamics contribute to the emergence of specific “FDC niches” within local ECEC systems. First, we analyze how national and local authorities construct and interpret the role of FDC, particularly in relation to centre-based care. We demonstrate how these interpretations translate into concrete steering instruments—authorization, remuneration, support, and quality assurance—and assign specific functions to FDC within local systems. Second, we focus on how this impacts interactions between parents, childminders, and other providers, shaping locally specific FDC configurations that often develop idiosyncratically and remain loosely connected to national regulations. Comparative analysis also highlights the fragility of these niches. As predominantly self-employed, childminders often have limited involvement in local decision-making compared to centre-based providers and are susceptible to local market forces. Combined with insufficient regulatory attention to the specific characteristics of FDC, this results in increased administrative burdens and challenges to recognition – ultimately destabilizing FDC’s role in ECEC despite its local functionality.

Bollig, S. (2025): Wohlfahrtsproduktion als heuristischer Zugang zum Eigensinn der Kindertagespflege im Feld der Frühen Bildung, Betreuung und Erziehung. In: Flämig, K./Schoyerer, G. (Eds.): Kindertagespflege aus theoretischer Perspektive. Diskurse, Deutungen und Entwicklungen. München: Deutsches Jugendinstitut. pp. 83–103. Gallego, R./Motos, S.G./Maestripieri, L. (Hrsg.) (2024): Social Innovation and Welfare State Retrenchment. A comparative analysis of early childhood education and care in Europe and beyond. Bingley, U.K.: Emerald Publishing Limited. Schoyerer, G./Ihm, M./Bach, C. (2021): Merkmale der Kindertagespflege. Ergebnisse der wissenschaftlichen Begleitung des Bundesprogramms „ProKindertagespflege: Wo Bildung für die Kleinsten beginnt“. München. Klinkhammer, N./Scholz, A. (2022): The German ECEC system: governance structure, policies, and constitutive norms. Bloch, B. et al. (Eds.): Early Childhood Education in Germany. Exploring Historical Developments and Theoretical Issues. London, New York: Routledge, pp. 125-141 Honig, M.S./Schmitz, A./Wiltzius, M. (2015): Early Education and the Unloved Market of Commercial Childcare in Luxembourg. In: Willekens, H./Scheiwe, K./Nawrotzki, K. (Eds..): The Development of Early Childhood Education in Europe and North America. London, pp. 254–274

Tackling inequality in education is a pressing concern in Europe and elsewhere. Therefore, many countries provide targeted funding for disadvantaged ECEC centres and schools to increase educational equality among the children. Since 2018, the Finnish government has provided additional, needs-based funding for the municipalities targeted to disadvantaged early childhood education and care (ECEC) centres and primary schools. The funding is ear-marked so that the government could monitor that the funding is spent for the purposes that it is assigned to. The appropriations for the annual expenditures are decided in the Finnish parliament, and the decisions of the allocation are made in the Ministry of Education and Culture based on statistical criteria and the content of the applications. Municipalities who receive the funding can allocate the money in their ECEC centres the way they consider the best within certain criteria set by the Ministry of Education and Culture. The municipalities are also required to annually report the usage of the funding to the ministry. The case of needs-based funding provides a case through which we are able to get a more nuanced picture of how municipalities navigate in national and local governing structures. Drawing on spatial methodologies (e.g. Freitag, Lauen & Roberton, 2022), this paper investigates the socio-spatial relations in the negotiations and decision-making of how the needs-based funding is utilised in the municipalities. More precisely, what happens when the needs-based funding to increase equality is brought to the level of the municipalities and the ECEC centres. Where is the control over the additional resources the funding provides located, and how and where is it negotiated? These negotiations are examined as contextually shifting (power) relations, not just as implementations of top-down policies (Massey, 2009). The data consist of the interviews of 11 municipal officials and 15 ECEC centre directors from ten municipalities in Finland. These municipalities have all received the funding and differ in demographics, geographical locations and in the equality problems they aim to tackle with the funding. The paper highlights the importance of local-level contexts in the education policy.

Freytag, T., Lauen, D. L., Robertson, S. L. (Eds.) Space, Place and Educational Settings. Knowledge and Space 16, Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78597-0 Massey, D. (2009). Concepts of space and power in theory and in political practice. Documents d'Anàlisi Geogràfica, 55(2009), 15˗26.

Demographic shifts, increasing demand for all-day childcare, and austerity policies shape the governance of early childhood education and care (ECEC) landscapes in German municipalities. The BMBF-funded research project NeOBi – ‘(Re)Shaping educational landscapes reflexively. On the risky social and school participation of children in peripheral social spaces’, by employing a multilevel approach, addresses these challenges in a rural setting in Eastern Germany. Following reunification, Eastern German municipalities faced debt and demographic changes, leading to a “district reform” based on New Public Management principles. This reform aimed for citizen-oriented administration, cost reduction, and efficiency. Our research investigates how this reform contributed to the (de)peripheralization of the ECEC landscape in rural East Germany. This presentation focuses on local governance processes concerning the steering of a rural ECEC landscape by a local authority in Eastern Germany. The impetus for this steering was a municipal plan to invest in childcare infrastructure by closing two older facilities and constructing a new, modern center. Using ethnographic discourse analysis (Macgilchrist/ Van Hout 2011), we examined how documents – including laws related to the district reform and early education curriculum guidelines – unfold their relevance in local contexts and are appropriated, negotiated, and reproduced by various actors. Interviews with local authorities and professionals were analyzed to assess the impact of municipal steering on the ECEC landscape. Our analysis indicates that stakeholders at diverse sites perceive the effects of the district reform less as a qualitative gain and more as infrastructural loss and individualization of shared lifeworlds. The reform contributed to the municipality’s marginalization, increasing dependence on neighboring cities and a decline in resources, leading to citizen dissatisfaction. These structural challenges necessitate navigating inherent ambivalences for local political actors. The central question for local authorities becomes the extent to which they can provide early education services that empower citizens to exert political influence and improve their living conditions. The study highlights a tension between centralized reforms aimed at efficiency and the lived realities of local stakeholders navigating diminished resources and a sense of peripheralization. It underscores the complex interplay between policy implementation, local contexts, and the potential for ECEC to contribute to broader social and political empowerment. Ultimately, the presentation argues for a nuanced understanding of the consequences of administrative reforms on the provision of equitable and empowering ECEC services in rural areas.

Jahnke, H. (2019). Territorial Governance of Schooling and Education in Rural Areas: Case Studies from Northern Germany. In H. Jahnke, C. Kramer & P. Meusburger (Eds.), Knowledge and Space. Geographies of Schooling (Vol. 14, pp. 19–33). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18799-6_2 Macgilchrist, Felicitas & Van Hout, Tom (2011): Ethnographic Discourse Analysis and Social Science [51 paragraphs]. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 12(1), Art. 18, http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs1101183.