engleski

Pandemic childcare-policy responses in 28 European countries: A fuzzy-set ideal type analysis

Immediate responses to the COVID-19 pandemic differed significantly across countries, including the general closures and reopenings of early childhood education and care services (ECEC) and schools. As a core element of containment policies against the pandemic, the (continued) provision of ECEC and schools suddenly became a highly contested arena. In the initial policy responses of spring 2020, similarities prevailed as most countries closed ECEC/schools and eventually provided emergency care, especially for key workers. In the reopening phase and later lockdowns of autumn/winter 2020/21, however, countries increasingly began to diverge, bringing a lot of complexity to the countries’ pandemic childcare-policy responses. For example, countries have often chosen stepwise reopening strategies marked by different pace and patterns or followed different approaches for ECECs and primary schools. Previous work has begun to describe this complexity of childcare-policy responses, marked by a country-specific balancing of public-health and more childcare-specific goals such as work- family reconciliation or education, and being more lenient or strict and universal or selective. Yet further work is needed to understand the cross- national patterns of variation. This paper aims to do so by collecting data on modes of pandemic ECEC/school closures and reopenings in 28 European countries. By developing a concrete set of indicators needed to disentangle various approaches, and using a fuzzy-set ideal type analysis, we identify and classify the (hybrid) forms of pandemic childcare-policy responses. The results may serve as a basis for further research interested in identifying plausible explanatory factors for different responses, such as organisational principles of childcare policies, ‘contagion’ effects, or countries’ different traditions (of contestedness) of (de-)familialising childcare services.

fuzzy-set ideal type analysis ; COVID-19 ; early childhood education and care ; school closures ; policy responses

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