Paper short abstract:

Drawing on data of a multi-sited and child-centered ethnography of kindergarten children in Zurich, Switzerland, this contribution explores how ephemeral insights into children's transnational out-of-school live get processed in pedagogical practice.

Paper long abstract:

"Dear Parents, from here on we can do it alone" is written, printed out on a sheet, laminated and attached to a kindergarten fence in a highly diverse, economically deprived neighbourhood on the outskirts of Zurich, Switzerland. This should not only prevent parents from accompanying their offspring into the cloakroom and help, as argued in smaller print below, the children to get self-confident and independent. It is also a sign of demarcation and anticipates disagreement in the conception of child-rearing. This paper is based on an in-depth ethnography of a kindergarten class. It aims at discussing the schooling of migrant children when parents are kept at distance. I explore how putative bits and pieces of transnational family lives - ephemeral insights - nevertheless find their way through the fence and enter kindergarten, and thus get filtered, translated and recognized within everyday practice of the kindergarten teachers. Thereby I show how those insights are made relevant in the teaching of migrant children in a supposedly compensatory manner and how they both legitimize and constitute a practice of Doing Swiss and, at the same time, how they are reflected back into the families.