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Abstract

Universal early childhood education and care is seen as a policy context that provides equal opportunities for all children to access early childhood education and care. In this view, ‘context’, such as the national early childhood education and care system, is often understood as a fixed space that is consistent for everyone. Examining the arrangements of early childhood education and care services at the local level of the universal early childhood education and care system in Finland, this article argues for a relational approach to examine access to early childhood education and care. It aims to exemplify how examining the arrangements of early childhood education and care from multiple entry points of place and scale can help to broaden understanding of the local barriers to access. The data consists of interviews with early childhood education and care administrators and parents from 10 municipalities in Finland. The article calls for a shift in focus from early childhood education and care systems as spatially transferrable entities to a more holistic and relational approach to the childcare decisions of families.

Keywords

early childhood education Finland relational approach universal access

In recent decades, many countries have developed their national early childhood education and care (ECEC) systems towards universal services. Universal ECEC refers to the idea that access to ECEC entails as few barriers as possible: services are equally available to everyone, regardless of their socio-economic status or abilities (Kildal and Kunhle, 2005). From a policy perspective, the provision of universal ECEC has typically meant addressing inequality of access – for instance, by providing legal entitlement to ECEC or making attendance free of charge. In this context, children's enrolment in ECEC has been considered not only as the parents’ choice (Nyby et al., 2017) but also as a responsibility (Vandenbroeck and Van Laere, 2020).

This article contributes to the scholarly discussion by taking a relational approach to the production of access to ECEC, utilising the case of the universal ECEC policy of Finland as an example. A relational approach, in this article, refers to an ontological understanding of the barriers to access, constituting social and material interdependencies ‘of becoming’ rather than pre-existing independent ‘beings’ (Spyrou et al., 2019). Building especially on Doreen Massey's (2005) ideas of relational space and place, the article explores the entwinement of universal ECEC policy and place. The aim is to demonstrate how an understanding of place as a constellation of simultaneously existing and competing trajectories, instead of a static and internally coherent entity (Massey, 2005), can broaden our understanding of the production of barriers to access to ECEC.

In examining the reasons for not utilising ECEC services, many studies have focused on factors related to the family, such as socio-economic status (Abrassart and Bonoli, 2015; Alexandersen et al., 2021; Gong et al., 2015), migrant background (Johnson et al., 2017; Schober and Spiess, 2013) and parental preferences (Carlin et al., 2019; Peyton et al., 2001). However, earlier studies also show how the accessibility of ECEC is related to – and often intertwined with – local circumstances and cultural expectations that extend beyond the characteristics of families. Cultural norms and ideals with regard to the care and education of young children construct differing social expectations for the use of ECEC services – for example, in terms of work–family consolidation (Järventausta et al., 2021; McLean et al., 2017; Stier et al., 2012) and differences between parents with full-time jobs and parents who are not participating in the labour market (Fjällström et al., 2020). Parents’ opportunities to adjust their working hours in accordance with the opening hours of ECEC services vary (McLean et al., 2017). At the same time, parents’ expectations and experiences of ECEC services or institutions in general affect their trust in the ECEC system and its approachability (Grace et al., 2014; Lamb, 2020; Siippainen et al., 2022).

Another line of research has focused on the availability of ECEC. Several studies (e.g. Anderson and Mikesell, 2019; Langford et al., 2018) have shown that ECEC services are more available in urban areas compared to rural areas. However, the results of a study examining parents’ perceived accessibility of ECEC in Europe suggest the opposite (Ünver et al., 2018). Moreover, studies from different country contexts show how ECEC centres, particularly for-profit providers, tend to be more available in affluent neighbourhoods (Baranyai, 2023; Cloney et al., 2016; Kawabata, 2014; Lee and Jang, 2017), and this seems also to be the case in the context of universal ECEC systems (Fjellborg and Forsberg, 2021; Ruutiainen et al., 2023; Trætteberg and Fladmoe, 2020). The ability of families to send their children to an ECEC centre if it is not situated nearby is contingent on the availability of resources, such as a car or public transport (McLean et al., 2017). In addition, the waiting lists and allocation practices of ECEC centres when there are not enough places available are found to favour highly educated families and those who belong to the ethnic majority, at the expense of lesser-educated families and ethnic minorities (Vandenbroeck et al., 2008).

In what follows, I will first introduce Massey's thinking on relational space and place, which is utilised as the epistemological and theoretical starting point of this article. I will then discuss the universal ECEC system of Finland, which is used as an example to examine access to ECEC.

Imagining relational space and place

As mentioned above, this article draws on Massey's (2005) ideas of relational space and place. For Massey, space is produced in relations (or the absence of relations) with ‘the other’. This means relations not only with other people, but also with things, materials and so on. It follows that if relations (or non-relations) exist, there must be multiplicity – that is, the simultaneous coexistence of more than one thing (Massey, 2005). This makes space ‘the dimension of contemporaneous multiplicity’ (Massey, 2009: 18).

Imagining space in this way has certain consequences. First, it affects the way we conceptualise place. When space is understood as the dimension of multiplicity, places cannot be viewed as mere locations with coherent identities (Massey, 2005). For Massey (2009), places are nodes of relations, where different, simultaneously existing trajectories meet. She argues for abandoning the binary of local–global, where the local represents a concrete, everyday place in opposition to an abstract, ‘out there’ global space (Massey, 2005). In her thinking, space, as produced in relations with others, is as concrete as place.

Second, for Massey (2005), an essential element of a place is the simultaneous existence of differing temporalities. She uses the concept of ‘throwntogetherness’ to describe this asynchronised constellation of relations between human and non-human others, which demand negotiation in order to be unavoidably able to live together. Therefore, the question of a place as ‘here’ must be seen as ‘here-and-now’, as a throwntogetherness of ‘rhythms which pulse at different beats’ (Massey, 2005: 158). Thus, this is very different from the understanding of place as static and pre-given, where change is possible only from the ‘outside’ (Massey, 2005). Moreover, understanding relations simultaneously as power relations (Massey, 2009) means that some trajectories are stronger than others in the negotiation of a place (Massey, 2005). This is what Fincher (2022) calls the ‘thrown’ part of the concept – the politics of the interactions here-and-now.

Third, and deriving from the previous aspects, this affects how we analyse place, and what kinds of questions we are asking. An analysis based on coding, grouping and categorising places in order to find different but static categories becomes irrelevant (Jackson and Mazzei, 2012). Rather, the questions concern the geographies of relations and the geographies of the negotiations of the relations (Massey, 2005). This turns the focus on the multiplicity of space – the difference rather than the sameness of trajectories (Jackson and Mazzei, 2012).

The case of Finland

Taking Massey's relational understanding of space and place as the theoretical and ontological premise, this article examines access to ECEC in the context of Finland. Aligning with the relational thinking of Massey, the ‘context’ of Finland is understood to include the relations and interconnections involved in the production of access, dissolving the predefined binaries of local–national or local–global (Massey, 2005: 184).

As one of the Nordic countries, Finland has been viewed as a representative of the Nordic social democratic welfare regime (Mahon et al., 2012), where ECEC services have been based on the idea of universalism since the establishment of the ‘Nordic welfare model’ in the 1960s and 1970s. Indeed, from a legislative perspective, the enactment of the Daycare Act 36/1973 obligated municipalities in Finland to provide full-time ECEC services with nationally regulated fees for all one-to-six-year-old children whose parents needed them – for example, in order to access the labour market. At the same time, centre-based and family-based ECEC (family day care) services were designated as equal forms of formal ECEC. In the 1990s, the right to ECEC was gradually extended to cover all children, regardless of their parents’ employment situation (Amendment to the Daycare Act, 28/1985 and 630/1991). Municipalities are obligated to assign a place to a child within four months of the parents’ application, or within two weeks if there is an acute need for a place – for example, because of parents' employment (Act on Early Childhood Education and Care, 540/2018).

While the legislation defines the responsibilities of the municipalities, local (municipal) governments have strong local autonomy over the practical organisation of public services (Constitution of Finland, 731/1999; Local Government Act, 410/2015). In terms of ECEC, this means both the forms of provision and the geographical distribution of ECEC units. In the 1990s, the decentralisation reform further increased the autonomy of local governance over public services, as well as significantly changing the amount of and criteria for government funding (Kröger, 2011). While central funding had formerly been based on the actual service provision, it was now changed to block grants, which the municipalities could use in any way they wished within the legislative boundaries (Kröger, 2011). Due to the extensive decentralisation and local autonomy, it has been suggested that instead of one overarching universalism of a welfare state, we should be considering multiple local universalisms (Kalalahti and Varjo, 2023).

Another legislative change that took place in the 1990s in the field of ECEC concerned public support of private ECEC provision (see Ruutiainen et al., 2020). In 1996, legislation on the private day-care allowance was introduced to provide public subsidy for families who purchased day-care services from private providers instead of using public ECEC (Act on Children's Home Care and Private Daycare Allowance, 1128/1996). Since the national fee regulations do not cover private provision, some municipalities have decided to pay additional subsidies on top of the national private day-care allowance to decrease the pressure on arranging public ECEC places (Lahtinen and Svartsjö, 2020). In 2009, public support for private ECEC provision was extended to cover ECEC vouchers (Act on Service Vouchers, 569/2009; Ruutiainen et al., 2020). A municipality decides on the value of the voucher but, according to the law, it should be ‘reasonable’ from the perspective of the consumer (Act on Service Vouchers, 569/2009). The majority of ECEC services in Finland are still publicly provided, even though the share of private provision has significantly increased since the introduction of vouchers (THL, 2021).

Whereas the above describes the institutional context of Finnish ECEC, the accessibility of ECEC does not occur in a legislative vacuum. From a spatial perspective, Finland is a geographically large country. The land area of Finland is 303,948 square kilometres, making it the sixth largest country in the European Union (Eurostat, 2023). At the same time, most of the land area is sparsely populated: 5% of the population lives in an area covering almost 70% of the land area (Lukkari and Åström, 2019). Moreover, aligning with the demographic trends of urbanisation (United Nations, 2019), domestic and international migration is increasingly focused on the largest cities in Finland. Consequently, the population is decreasing in many parts of the country, particularly among the demographic of families with children (Ministry of Finance, 2020). At the end of 2022, the population of Finland was 5,563,970, of which 40% lived in the nine largest cities in Finland (municipalities of over 100,000 residents). Conversely, half of the municipalities had fewer than 6000 residents (Statistics Finland, 2024). This demographic change has implications for the local infrastructure of public services. In the context of rural schools, school closures accelerate the decrease in population in nearby areas, which has consequences for the existence of other child and family services, including ECEC (Lehtonen, 2021).

Understanding the space of ECEC arrangements as relationally produced, Massey's thinking enables us to go beyond the idea of a universal ECEC system as a coherent entity. I argue that the Finnish case is useful in demonstrating what happens when universal ECEC is put in conversation with other simultaneously existing trajectories beyond the categorical understanding of national or ‘local’ ECEC systems, where space is seen as a static background and the counterpart of time (Massey, 2005). To avoid the one-dimensionality of focusing only on one aspect of socio-spatial relations (see Jessop et al., 2008), access to ECEC is approached both from the level of the municipalities as the organisers of ECEC and from the level of the families utilising these services.

Research design

The research task is twofold. First, I examine how the key actors in local-level ECEC institutions construct the geographic arrangement of ECEC provision and how it is materialised in arranging ECEC in their municipality. Second, I examine how parents navigate accessing ECEC in relation to the arrangements of ECEC provision and the socio-material relations available to them. Utilising the approach of ‘thinking with theory’ (Jackson and Mazzei, 2012), the purpose of the analysis is to demonstrate what happens to universal ECEC when the data is ‘plugged in’ to Massey's conceptualisation of relational place. The focus of the analysis is on the differences rather than finding sameness within the data sets (Jackson and Mazzei, 2012). Therefore, instead of grouping or categorising the municipalities or the families, I demonstrate how the local arrangements of universal ECEC and parents’ endeavours to access the services become ‘thrown together’ in the event of place (Massey, 2005). Thinking with the relational place enables us to grasp the coexisting differences, rather than positioning everything on one line of singular temporality where different places are just in different stages of development (Massey, 2001).

The study’s data comprises two sets of interviews: interviews with ECEC administrators (n = 10) and interviews with parents (n = 51; 43 mothers and 16 fathers) from 10 different municipalities in Finland. The interviews were conducted in 2019 as part of a larger research project. The municipalities vary in terms of their geographic location and size, population structure, economic structure and local policies for organising ECEC services (see Hietamäki et al., 2017). The research was approved by the ethics committee of the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. All the interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed. To ensure the interviewees’ anonymity, some details in the excerpts (e.g. place names) have been slightly altered.

The ECEC administrators were invited to be interviewed because of their key positions in organising ECEC services in their municipalities. The administrators had knowledge about the local strategies and policies of the geographical arrangement of ECEC services in their municipalities. The interviews with the administrators were conducted as telephone interviews. In the interviews, the administrators discussed actions, plans and rationales concerning the organisation of ECEC services in their municipalities. With regard to the parent interviews, the researchers interviewed either one (n = 43) or both of the parents (n = 8) of a four-year-old child in a location chosen by the parent(s). In the interviews, the parents discussed their childcare decisions, reflecting on the changes and consistencies in the arrangements, particularly focusing on the four-year-old child in their family. Four-year-olds are a relevant age group for this study because, in the Finnish ECEC system, they are not yet eligible for mandatory, free-of-charge pre-primary education (Act on Early Childhood Education and Care, 540/2018; Basic Education Act, 628/1998). The parents were encouraged to talk freely about their own thoughts and experiences.

The analysis began with carefully reading and rereading the interviews. The interviews of the administrators and the parents were examined separately. Keeping in mind the relational view of places, the particular interest was in those sections where there was some kind of ‘coming together of trajectories’ (Massey, 2005: 284) in terms of ECEC arrangements, both in organising and utilising the services – in other words, finding moments where the relations with the other, human or non-human, needed to be negotiated in order to provide ECEC services or to access them. In the following two sections, I focus first on the interviews with the ECEC administrators. Then, with the help of the parent interviews, I demonstrate how the parents’ endeavours to access ECEC were ‘thrown together’ in the event of place (Massey, 2005). To do so, two of the parent interviews have been selected from the data for a more detailed examination.

Central areas and the outskirts: local geometries of universal access

This section focuses on unravelling the municipalities as places of organising universal ECEC. Massey's (2005) relational understanding of space and place enables us to go past the binaries of the ‘concrete’ local and the ‘out there’ global. As mentioned above, the focus of the analysis was to find moments of negotiation, where the universalism of ECEC became in conflict with the place. In the data, this was particularly evident when the administrators discussed the arrangement of ECEC services in relation to the demographic changes. The global phenomenon of urbanisation was an essential part of the production space of ECEC arrangements. In the growing cities, the administrators discussed the shortage of ECEC places, building new ECEC centres and the establishment of new residential areas. In the municipalities with a decreasing number of residents, the pressure to downsize the public service network was commonly discussed in the interviews. In the following excerpt, an administrator discusses the municipality's strategy concerning the public ECEC service network. In this municipality, the number of children living in the rural villages had been continuously declining, and discussion regarding the potential closures of schools and ECEC centres was ongoing:
Nowadays, we are constantly considering what is the minimum size of a unit that could still continue; do we have enough children and pupils. […] Naturally, we do not establish new ECEC units there [on the ‘outskirts’] if the need for the services ends because it would be hard to fill the places. If new premises are built, the services are concentrated [in bigger units].
This excerpt demonstrates the construction of universal ECEC as a meeting point of demographic change (a decrease in child residents) and the legislative obligations for universalism, as well as the demands for the financial efficiency of the organisation of public services. In the excerpt, the existence of public ECEC services on the ‘outskirts’ of the municipality (an expression used by the interviewee) is evaluated in relation to the efficient usage of ECEC places – that is, having ‘enough’ children to meet the financial rationale of maintaining or establishing an ECEC unit. This can produce situations where it is institutionally justified to have less access to ECEC than elsewhere. The following excerpt, from another municipality, further exemplifies this issue:
Unfortunately, we have [an area] where we have mainly family day care available, but still not enough for everyone. So, from there, the families are coming to the municipality centre for ECEC services. But for some reason, the families are used to it, and we barely get any complaints. Because people come here [to the municipality centre] for errands or to work or whatever, so the route is quite natural. … So, we definitely have some room for improvement. But it would require building new premises, and that is not possible at the moment. And the number of our child residents does not require it. We can currently arrange ECEC places for everyone in our existing premises.
In this excerpt, the administrator states that there is a lack of ECEC places in one area of the municipality. The throwntogetherness of the universal access policy, the municipality's tight budget (not possible to build new premises), the area's position in relation to the local road network and existing ECEC services (a ‘natural’ driving route), and the interpretation of a routine (families are used to it) produce a place of ‘good enough’ access. It also demonstrates the multiple temporalities of a place: the spatial arrangement of the roads and the existing services become in tune with the assumption about the local habits of the families, and connected with the more instant temporality of using public money in the building of new ECEC premises (‘not possible at the moment’).

However, considering the ECEC service network, the production of the central areas and the outskirts does not relate only to the question of municipality centres versus sparsely populated areas. Indeed, it can also relate to the appeal of an area from the perspective of the market, as the following excerpt demonstrates:
[The role of private provision] pretty much depends on the neighbourhood. They [private providers] are indeed focused on the more solvent customers because it is a bit pricier service. So, even though we have private ECEC available all over the city, it is much more concentrated in certain areas. Because they [private providers] can, of course, choose their customers from wherever they want, and [in the certain areas] there is more demand for their services.
In this excerpt, the administrator discusses the spatial distribution of private ECEC centres in their municipality (e.g., Fjellborg and Forsberg, 2021; Ruutiainen et al., 2023; Trætteberg and Fladmoe, 2020). As noted in earlier studies, private ECEC providers tend to be more often located in socio-economically affluent neighbourhoods. In the excerpt above, the central areas of arranging ECEC are produced in relation to the assumed demand for the services – that is, areas with a sufficient number of solvent residents with children under school age.

A relational approach allows us to examine the local arrangement of ECEC provision as a throwntogetherness of a variety of trajectories. Massey's (2005) relational approach to space and place enables us to grasp the differing geographies of access to ECEC from the level of the organisers of ECEC services. The following section looks at the entwinement of universal ECEC and place in families’ endeavours to access ECEC.

Trajectories thrown together: parents seeking access to ECEC

As already mentioned, the ECEC legislation in Finland obligates municipalities to assign an ECEC place to a child within four months of an application. Whereas it is recommended that services are organised near families’ homes, this is not mandatory (Act on Early Childhood Education and Care, 540/2018). In the parent interviews, the central concern in relation to accessing ECEC was getting a place in an ECEC unit that was conveniently located for the family. Most of the parents were pleased with the ECEC place they had been allocated for their child. However, as this section illustrates, access to universal ECEC does not occur in a vacuum of families’ resources and preferences. Instead, they become intertwined with the multiplicity of relations in how local ECEC services are arranged. Here, I focus on demonstrating this with the examples of two families: the Vuorela family and the Rantala family (pseudonyms). Aligning with the parent interviews in general, the distance and transport to the place offered played a central role in accessing ECEC for both the Vuorelas and the Rantalas. However, their stories illustrate the throwntogetherness of socio-material relations, which produces differing positions for the families in accessing ECEC. I am not claiming that these examples capture all the possible factors affecting families’ access to universal ECEC. Rather, they illustrate the relationality of it, which extends beyond the characteristics and preferences of these families.

The case of the Vuorelas provides an example of how the geographical arrangement of the local ECEC centres and the demographic changes became entwined in accessing ECEC services. The Vuorelas lived in a small municipality that offered ECEC in both public and private centres, as well as family day care. The majority of the residents lived in the municipality's centre, as did the Vuorelas. The other areas of the municipality were semi-rural and rural neighbourhoods. There were also a couple of villages outside the municipal centre. Mrs Vuorela had been taking care of their child at home and looking for a job for some time. The parents had sent in an application for an ECEC place in advance, but when the mother gained employed, the need for an ECEC place became more urgent. The mother's new workplace was in another municipality and, because of the long commute, the father was mainly responsible for taking their child to the ECEC centre. The family had a car, which the mother used for her commute, so they needed a place within walking distance. Buying a second car was not an option for the family. The family relied mainly on the mother's salary, so, despite the time-consuming commute, according to Mrs Vuorela, ‘the most important thing was to get a job and to get some money’. In the following excerpt, she discusses their application process:
We applied for a place at [the ECEC centre located in] the municipal centre. And getting a place was a struggle. The municipality said that they did not have a place, so they suggested a centre that was far away from our home. And we told them that it was not possible for us. We did not have a second car that my husband could have used to drive our child [to the ECEC centre].
This excerpt demonstrates how the preferences of the family were in conflict with the local policies for arranging universal ECEC. Regardless of the child's entitlement to receive an ECEC place with strongly subsidised fees, the place that was offered originally was inaccessible for the family. In the excerpt, the mother states that the location of the centre where the place was offered was ‘not possible’ for them. The mother mentions that they had originally applied for a place in the municipal centre, implying that there were other options closer to their home available in the municipality. Thus, the distance to the assigned centre was evaluated in relation to the location of their home and the distance to other centres in the municipality – receiving a place within walking distance would have been possible. In another situation where transport to the closest centre would have required a car, the family might have made other childcare arrangements.

In addition to the distance, the Vuorelas’ access to ECEC was entwined with the demographic changes. Because of the decline in the number of child residents, the municipality had been cutting the service network of ECEC units. In the following excerpt, Mrs Vuorela continues to discuss their application process:
They [the ECEC officials] would have wanted to place our child in a centre that I knew they were planning to close down in the near future. And I told them straight that it is not in the best interests of the child to start at a centre and soon get transferred to another centre because the original centre has closed. But it turned out fine, eventually. They understood and offered us a place at an ECEC centre closer to our home.
The case of the Vuorelas also demonstrates the existence of differing and simultaneous temporalities (discussed also in relation to the second excerpt). In this excerpt, the family’s acute need for an ECEC place was negotiated in relation to the more slowly changing demographics and ECEC service network. In the case of the Vuorelas, it also worked as an argument for Mrs Vuorela to negotiate access with the officials: it was not just that the parents could not arrange transport to the centre; assigning a child a place in an ECEC centre that would soon be closed was ‘not in the best interests of the child’. Based on the data, it cannot be concluded whether the actions of the mother (‘I told them straight’) caused the municipality to arrange for a place closer to the family's home, but placement in another centre was arranged.

The Rantalas, in turn, lived in a large city that provided a dense network of both public and private ECEC services. In the demographic context of Finland, the municipality was a densely populated urban area. The case of the Rantalas demonstrates another kind of constellation of a place of ECEC arrangements. Even though the municipality where the Rantalas lived was investing in new ECEC centres, there was a shortage of ECEC places. The parents had considered different ECEC options, including family day care. Eventually, they ended up applying for a place for their child with a preference for some of the public ECEC centres close to their home. However, their child was allocated an ECEC place in another neighbourhood on the other side of the city. In the following excerpt, Mrs Rantala discusses their situation:
We did not get a place at any of the public ECEC centres in our own or nearby neighbourhoods. Instead, we got a place at a centre that was in a new residential area in the middle of a construction site on the other side of the city. … And there would have been massive traffic jams from our home to that neighbourhood, so it would have taken 45 minutes to drive there, at the worst. So it was the milieu, and everything.
The above excerpt provides another example of the multiple temporalities of a place that Massey (2005) reminds us of. From the perspective of the Rantalas, the accessibility of the ECEC centre offered was discussed in relation to the time taken for the journey rather than the (Euclidean) distance. In addition, as the building of the new residential area was expected to take some time, it was not an appealing place as a here-and-now for the family.

In contrast to the Vuorelas, the Rantalas did not continue negotiating with officials to get a place at a more conveniently located unit. Instead, they began to search for other options on the private market – an option that was not discussed in the case of the Vuorelas, even though there were private ECEC providers operating in their municipality. The Rantalas found a place for their child on the private market and utilised the private day-care allowance to cover part of the fees. In the following excerpt, Mrs Rantala discusses the arrangements they had made in order to be able to utilise the service:
Researcher: So, you have been satisfied with the [private] ECEC centre?

Mrs Rantala: Yes, even though it requires some sacrifices from us because it's very expensive. And we are not a high-income family. … And, in addition, the opening hours are such that we need to leave our work earlier. … It means that, currently, I cannot take a full-time job. … But I have made that decision, that I get by with less money. Because, financially, when you are able to work fewer hours per day, the salary is smaller. But in the end, I believe it is all worth it.
In this excerpt, Mrs Rantala discusses the prerequisites for being able to access the private ECEC centre. The fees were higher compared to public ECEC centres and, because of its operating hours, she could only work part-time. Regardless of the challenges, the parents had the resources to pay for the ECEC place and had jobs where it was possible to adjust their working hours in accordance with the opening hours of the centre, which enabled them to access it. At the same time, private ECEC services are not provided if there are no customers to utilise these services, which narrows the market areas for ECEC providers charging higher fees than public ECEC providers (Ruutiainen et al., 2021). The uneven geographical distribution of ECEC services (discussed also in regard to the third extract above) can create situations where access to nearby ECEC in some neighbourhoods is more of a financial question than elsewhere. On the one hand, some families need to take their children to more distant neighbourhoods to access more affordable ECEC services. On the other, some families, like the Rantalas, need to make arrangements as described above to be able to access ECEC closer to their home.

Discussion

The aim of this article has been to argue for a relational approach to examining access to ECEC – or, more precisely, to examine what happens to universal ECEC when it is put in conversation with relational place. The analysis demonstrates how the universal ECEC legislation for arranging ECEC services in Finland becomes entangled with other trajectories, such as municipal autonomy and demographic change, simultaneously producing uneven places of organising and accessing ECEC.

The first part of the analysis focuses on constructions of geographic arrangements of local ECEC provision. The relational analysis of the rationalisations for the geographic arrangement of ECEC services shows that, regardless of the universal ECEC system, there are differing and simultaneously existing constructions of place where the justifications for access to ECEC differ. Aligning with Massey's (2009) thinking that all relations are power relations, this raises concerns about the possible increasing inequality between children and families in a situation where population projections forecast the continuation of urbanisation and decrease in the number of residents in rural neighbourhoods. As the results of this article demonstrate, the question of universal ECEC provision extends beyond the immediate context of an ECEC system. Thus, in order to tackle the socio-spatial inequality of access, it is also important to broaden policy measures beyond ECEC legislation.

The second part of the analysis focuses on the relational production of access to ECEC from the perspective of two families. Previous studies have reported socio-economic (Abrassart and Bonoli, 2015; Alexandersen et al., 2021; Gong et al., 2015) and spatial (Baranyai, 2023; Cloney et al., 2016; Kawabata, 2014) disparities in accessing ECEC. Earlier literature on the accessibility of ECEC has also pointed to the differing resources that families have for transporting their child to centres as one factor producing inequality of access to services (McLean et al., 2017). The results of this article highlight the need to consider the abovementioned barriers to access as situationally entwined. Thus, this article argues for a more holistic understanding of the production of barriers to access, where the relationality of place is taken seriously.

In addition, the examples of the Vuorela and Rantala families demonstrate that the power relations in arranging ECEC services do not always work from the top down. Whereas the ECEC decisions that parents make are always relational to the arrangement of ECEC services, parents’ decisions also shape the arrangement of services (Cummins et al., 2007). In other words, the composition of an ECEC service network is relational to the users of the services, whether it is a matter of a sufficient number of children to maintain or close an ECEC unit or the provision of public versus private ECEC places in a certain neighbourhood.

Conclusion

Utilising Massey's (2005) relational approach to space and place, this article has demonstrated how the arrangement and utilisation of universal ECEC provision are negotiated and renegotiated in a complex and uneven socio-material web of relations. The results indicate that what is available to a family in a certain situation does not depend solely on universal ECEC legislation, the material setting of the ECEC services available in a municipality, or the characteristics or abilities of a family. Rather, the question is what happens when these factors intersect.

Overall, this article has demonstrated that when access to ECEC is examined from a relational approach, the situatedness of barriers can be made visible: regardless of the universal ECEC system, the barriers to access do not remain the same at all times and in all places for all families. Thinking of access to ECEC as a ‘coming together’ of different people, things and trajectories helps us to go beyond the idea of a ‘universal ECEC system’ as a static, spatialised and transferrable entity where the opportunities to make choices are the same for everyone.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

This work was supported byOpetus- ja Kulttuuriministeriö [Ministry of Education and Culture, Finland]; Strategic Research Council (grant number 293049, 314317); Suomen Kulttuurirahasto [Finnish Cultural Foundation].

ORCID iD

Salla Fjällström

Author biography

Salla Fjällström is a doctoral researcher in a Doctoral Programme of Education and Society, Tampere University. Her research interests are focused on spatial segregation and inequality in accessing ECEC.

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Access to universal early childhood education and care in Finland: A relational approach

Abstract

Keywords

Imagining relational space and place

The case of Finland

Research design

Central areas and the outskirts: local geometries of universal access

Trajectories thrown together: parents seeking access to ECEC

Discussion

Conclusion

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

Funding

ORCID iD

Author biography

References