Abstract
This article investigates temporality in the everyday lives of 9-year-old children of international professionals in Finland. The children’s transnational mobility causes ruptures and discontinuities in their position within various timescapes. The institutional timescapes of schools in different countries appear to be somewhat incompatible, which can be challenging for these mobile children, especially if their sojourns are temporary. At the same time, the timescapes of the Finnish school system provide children with particular agency beyond the school setting, since school days are relatively short. Children also view differing timescapes differently depending on the length of their stay in the country. The article shows how past, present and future timescapes, and potential ruptures within these, become entangled when mobile professionals’ children negotiate their position and agency within various timescapes.
Do you think your family will return to India one day?
I think we will go back to India.
Do you know when?
No. (Ajay 1 )
Growing numbers of children move between countries because of their parent(s)’ careers. The temporary labour migration of highly educated professionals, sometimes called career expatriates or transnational corporate elites (Amit, 2002; Fechter, 2007), is increasing in various parts of the world. These professionals are relatively well-paid and their sojourns abroad are career-driven and voluntary. Typically, they return to their native countries or move on to other locations after a few years. Often, these experts are accompanied by their children, but very little is known about the children’s views and experiences. 2
In this article, I use time as a lens through which to discuss the lives of mobile professionals’ 9-year-old children in Finland. When people move from one country to another, the geographical locations and socio-cultural environments change but so do temporalities, and this affects their lives on various fronts. In fact, global mobility necessarily causes ruptures in an individual’s position within temporal structures. First of all, people’s everyday use of time and position within various institutional and societal timeframes changes. Secondly, as the interview extract above illustrates, even though the international professionals’ children are aware that their sojourn is temporary, they might not know how long they are going to stay. Nevertheless, they do know that there will be a rupture in the smooth progress of time and in their everyday routines, just as there was when they moved to Finland in the first place.
I use the sociologist Barbara Adam’s (2000) concept of timescapes as an analytical starting point. Timescape means ‘the temporal equivalent of landscape, recognizing all the temporal features of socio-environmental events and processes, charting temporal profiles in their political and economic contexts’. A timescape analysis recognizes both the temporal context and ‘the temporal complexity of socio-environmental events and processes’. It also emphasizes the overlapping pluralities and multi-dimensionality of time. Adam stresses that a ‘timescape analysis is not concerned to establish what time is but what we do with it and how time enters our system of values’ (Adam, 2000: 137).
In this article, I first outline my theoretical premises, namely my approaches to time and childhood, and then describe my research setting and the ethnographic methods I have used. Throughout the article, I argue that the transnational mobility of mobile professionals’ children produces ruptures in their positions within different timescapes. First of all, I elaborate on the institutional timescape of schools. I discuss how children negotiate their past, present and future in the midst of, at times incompatible, school systems and the timescapes within them. Secondly, I elaborate on how the timescapes of the Finnish school system provide children with particular agency beyond the school setting. Thirdly, I discuss how potential future ruptures in timescapes caused by forthcoming transnational mobility affect the children’s views and practices in the present. I argue that timescapes become reality in children’s everyday lives and practices and, consequently, that timescape analysis provides a fruitful lens through which to investigate global childhoods and transnationally mobile children’s agency.
Theoretical framework
Time and childhood
Childhood has been understood in two major ways with regard to time. First of all, children have been viewed in terms of a future-oriented ‘becoming’, in which they are seen as ‘adults in the making’, in reference to a progressive temporality. Since the late 1990s, however, researchers (James and Prout, 1997) have started to emphasize children’s agency, which has led to a focus on the present; children are seen as active agents here and now. Considering children as active agents has been groundbreaking, as it takes their views and experiences to be important aspects of social worlds and sees children themselves as important actors in societies, here and now, rather than as objects of adult interventions where the focus is on their future becoming (Hardman, 2001: 503–504). However, in focusing too rigidly on the present, there is a danger of downplaying the temporal dimensions of growth, flux and change (Neale and Flowerdew, 2003: 195) that are essential parts of childhood. Instead of viewing children as either future adults or purely in terms of the present, we need to acknowledge that they are both ‘being’ and ‘becoming’ (Uprichard, 2008: 303).
Karl Hanson (2017) has, however, argued that the model of ‘being’ and ‘becoming’ ignores an equally important temporal aspect of childhood, that of ‘having been’. In other words, in addition to the present and the future, the past should be taken into account in childhood studies. This past includes three aspects: children’s individual pasts, and the histories of their families and of their communities. In this article, I look at the mobile professionals’ children’s experiences through this triolectical lens: how do ‘the having been’, ‘the being’ and ‘the becoming’ manifest in their lives in Finland?
The model in which the past, the present and the future are taken into account is based on an understanding of time in terms of linearity – as a progressive arrow. Time can, however, also be seen as non-linear processes, as processes without ‘development’ (Nielsen, 2016: 2–3). The non-linear approach to time is often seen in reference to spaces. According to the geographer Doreen Massey (1994: 4), spaces can be seen as particular moments in relations in which time and space are integral to each other; it is not only that time is related to particular spaces but that relationships create and define space and time. Massey also emphasizes simultaneity, arguing that with a spatialized view we can recognize ‘simultaneous temporal trajectories’ (Massey, 2004: 11).
When time is understood to be related to specific locations and spaces, a change of space – for example when someone moves from one country to another – necessarily means an interruption in the timescapes within which one operates. Consequently, paying attention to these disruptions and discontinuities provides a fruitful lens through which to investigate the timescapes that the mobile professionals’ children encounter and navigate.
Time and schools
Viewing children in terms of ‘becoming’ – as future adults – is particularly visible in schools, since their task is to educate children to become skilful and knowledgeable adults. The temporal contexts of schools are highly structural (Saul, 2016: 243). School systems form clear temporal paths that children are supposed to follow. Although the emphasis is on the future, the past is also relevant in this institutional timescape; children progress in their studies on the assumption that they have learned certain things in the past. Institutional timescapes, including those of schools, are necessary; they create order and structure without which the institutions themselves would collapse. Lina Lago has written that the timeframe of a school system becomes visible especially when it is broken, in particular when someone is held back in a class of children younger than them (Lago, 2017: 251). Similarly, Hunter Knight has written about ‘problem children’, referring to children who are ‘temporally out-of-sync’ in the everyday lives of schools, ‘doing the wrong thing at the wrong time’ (Knight, 2019: 76–77).
Consequently, a starting point in this article is that the rigid timeframes of schools become particularly visible when children move between schools in different countries. Here, it is important to note that although schools as institutional systems are future-oriented, the actual experiences of children very much take place in the present. Nevertheless, the children’s ‘being’, ‘becoming’ and ‘having been’ are all significant when looking at children’s experiences of timescapes in school systems.
The case study and methodology
Finland, among many other countries, welcomes highly skilled experts from abroad because they offer skills that are in demand in the context of global competition and also because a foreign labour force is needed due to an ageing domestic population. There are no accurate statistics on the phenomenon but estimates are that there are thousands of such foreigners in Finland. Many of them have previously lived abroad and do not intend to stay in Finland permanently. The most common nationalities among skilled foreign professionals in Finland are Russian, Indian, Chinese, US, British and French. In most cases, it is the father of the family who has been recruited to work in Finland, and the mother and children accompany him. Most of them live in urban areas, the majority in the capital, and the children attend international schools – if they manage to gain admission. 3
This article is based on an ethnographic study focusing on children with international backgrounds who currently live in Finland because of their parent(s)’ career. It investigates their everyday lives and experiences of transnational mobility. As part of this project, I conducted ethnographic research in an international school in a Finnish town in 2019–2020. The school, like most international schools in Finland, is a state-funded municipal school; teaching is delivered in English but the Finnish curriculum is followed, and there are no tuition fees. 4
My research methods included interviews, participant observation and participatory photography projects. I took part in the school activities of a class of 9-year-olds for 2–3 days a week, 4–6 hours a day, over a 9-month period. I participated in everyday classroom activities, school events, excursions and after-school activities, played with the children during breaks and accompanied some of them to the nearby library in the afternoons. In addition to writing notes on my observations, I often ended up as a sort of a school assistant during lessons, but outside the classroom context I was more actively engaged with the children through chatting and playing with them. When schools were closed during the COVID-19 lockdown, I took part in online lessons. I also interviewed about twenty children and gave them digital cameras, with the task of taking photos of important things and events in their everyday lives. Afterwards, I talked about the photos with the child who had taken them. I also visited the homes of some of the children, joining them on their way to or from school (for a more detailed account of the fieldwork, see Korpela, 2022).
The study was approved by the ethics board of my home university, and research permits were obtained from both the school principal and the municipal school administration. Information sheets were sent out to all the children and consent forms were collected from parents whose children participated. In addition, I explained the research to the children several times, and they asked me questions about it on a number of occasions. The participating children also gave me oral consent for their participation, typically several times during the project.
The children in this study were of various nationalities. Some children had roots in European countries, and in other affluent countries such as the USA, Canada and Australia. Many of the children came from India, and some from China and other Asian countries, and from Africa. 5 A number of them had recently arrived in Finland, some even during my fieldwork, while others had been in the country for years. The families that stayed in the country on temporary bases were usually relatively well off; the parents worked in positions that required specific skills, the IT industry being the most popular field. Among the permanent residents, there was more variation from well-off upper middle classes to blue collar workers with modest income. During my fieldwork, all the children were living in a Finnish town, and creating their everyday routines in that locality. At the same time, many of them had pasts in other places and often also imagined their futures elsewhere.
School time, becoming and ruptures
Time in the school institution
Lago, who has studied transitions in schools, writes that things happen in particular temporal locations in a school system. There is a right time and a right pace at which to do things. For example, pupils are supposed to move up from one grade to the next at a particular age, at a particular time of year (Lago, 2017: 244–246). School systems, and timings within them, however, differ between countries. Moreover, children learn different things at the same grade level because curriculums and the pace of education vary.
A crucial factor is that children start school at different ages in different countries. In Finland, they start at seven, which is later than in many other locations. This can present challenges for children who move from one country and school system to another:
When you came to this school, was it easy to start studying?
Yeah. Because the things that we are studying here I’ve already learned. [. . .] I’ve read all those things.
How does that feel?
Like I’m revising things more and more times.
Is it boring?
Nah.
Ok. So if you went to India now, what would happen?
I would be sad. [. . .] I would be behind all my friends. I’d need to continue fifth grade then. I don’t want to go to India.
You prefer it here?
Yes. (Sonu)
The children with whom I spent the school year were third graders in the Finnish system. They would, however, have been fourth or fifth graders in countries where some of them had lived before. To many, it was initially disappointing to be in a lower grade in Finland; they felt it made them look younger than they were, which they did not like.
We were surprised to hear that I would need to go to a third grade here. In India, I would have been a fifth grader this year. (Ajay)
When children move from one system to another, they need to modify their understanding that grades are meant for particular ages. This was a recurring theme during my fieldwork, with children often explaining to me about the different grade systems in countries where they had previously lived. In particular, they often described how their own position had changed when they had come to Finland, that is, they had had to adjust to the fact that their ‘progress’ in one system was reversed when, for example, a fifth grader became a third grader. In other words, they had to adjust to a different institutional timescape wherein their own position came to be defined differently from how they had previously experienced it elsewhere. Consequently, when they reflected on their present situation in relation to their past experiences, the change in school timescapes was very tangible to them.
Although in many countries it is considered important that children begin their education early, Finnish educators emphasize how children learn more effectively when they do not start school at a very young age (see Pulkkinen, 2018). At the same time, in more competitive education systems, children study more at an earlier age than in Finland in certain subjects – maths, for example. Consequently, children may feel that they are revising when they attend a Finnish school: School is much better in Finland. You can just relax and enjoy. (Ajay)
In India, we did more homework.
More than in Finland?
Yes, of course. Here it takes like five minutes and it’s done. (Sonu)
I went [to my old school in France] for a day when I went there on holiday [. . .] And then I saw it was so difficult [. . .] I thought thank goodness I don’t go there anymore. (Luna)
As the comments above illustrate, many children told me they enjoy being in a Finnish school because it is less competitive and more relaxed. At the same time, they are aware of the potential problems that being in Finland would cause them if they returned because they would be considered behind with their studies there. In other words, the past affects the present and it also affects the children’s reflections on their potential futures. The institutional timescapes of school thus appear as powerful frameworks, with transnationally mobile children potentially ending up in positions wherein their situations appear as disruptions.
In Finland, children coming from abroad are usually placed in a grade that corresponds to their age. The justification for this is that although the child may be more advanced in some areas, this is not necessarily the case for all subjects, and it is good that their classmates are of the same age. Some families find this difficult to accept, and some parents try to convince schools to place their children in grades above their age – usually without success. A particular challenge is the temporary nature of the stays of many professionals’ families. If children move to a different school system permanently, they most likely adjust eventually and acquire the necessary skills before finishing school as teenagers. However, when children move to a different system temporarily (among the families of international professionals this is typically for 1–3 years), it may become challenging to move back or onto yet another one afterwards, as the systems are constructed with the expectation of children completing their entire education within the same one. In other words, the systems are designed with the expectation of continuity and do not take into account disruptions.
Children’s transnational mobility thus makes visible the somewhat incompatible institutional timescapes of schools. Within such timescapes, there is a clear timeframe – a progressive linear arrow of time – within which a child is expected to progress towards the future, and moving from one school system to another interrupts this. In such a situation, the expected progress from the past to the future is not a smooth linear process but a rupture that requires readjustment.
Schools as institutions emphasize ‘becoming’ – a long-term plan towards adulthood – but in the children’s own experience the focus is much more on the present; they feel and act here and now. This becomes evident when children struggle to catch up or when they enjoy the relaxed school life they have because they are studying topics they have already covered. It is in the present where time becomes tangible and an individual child negotiates the timescapes within which they act.
Cyclical time in the classroom
Go for a walk near your home and write a list of the signs of spring that you see. (A science assignment, Field diary, April 2020)
Season-related assignments like the one described above are common in Finnish schools, as elsewhere (see Lago, 2017: 248). However, seasons, and activities related to them, vary from country to country and this may become tangible for children who move between countries and climates.
Seasonal timescapes are cyclical, characterized by repetition, and, as such, they often become self-evident to people who live in a particular location and climate. For the mobile professionals’ children, however, such timescapes are often new. For them, there is nothing familiar or repetitive about them and, when they try to make sense of them, they often reflect on their past experiences of climates and timescapes they have related to elsewhere.
When recently arrived children try to make sense of seasonal signs in Finland, it becomes evident that the passing of time in connection with the seasons is linked to geographical locations. With season-related assignments, recently arrived children end up having to figure out the seasonal changes and the passing of time from a very different position to that of those who are more familiar with them because they have lived in Finland for longer, even all their lives, and have therefore already experienced the seasons before.
Time reckoning and cyclical timescapes in schoolwork relate not only to seasons but also to cultural and national events. When schools operate on national curriculums, they reproduce certain cultural and national celebrations and yearly routines. For example, Finnish Independence Day, Kalevala Day 6 and May Day were explicitly celebrated in my fieldwork school. For long-term residents who engage with these celebrations year after year, the events mark the passing of time and annual routines. Those who have arrived recently are not familiar with Finnish celebrations and, for them, such events do not mark the passing of time, repetition or routine, presenting instead an entirely new timescape. Therefore, although schools construct seasonal and cultural/national timescapes and make them visible at certain events, individual pupils can view these timescapes from very different perspectives depending on their length of sojourn in Finland, and moving to Finland provides many children with a new, unfamiliar, cultural and national timescape.
At the same time, many international professionals’ children are aware of the cultural/national timescapes of their passport countries.
Last weekend, I went with my family to the Independence Day party of my country. We sang the national anthem and danced a song we had practiced before. (Alice)
It was common for many parents to organize and attend events with their co-nationals, celebrating the national, cultural or religious festivals of their native countries. Children are important target audiences at such events; often specific activities are organized with the aim of educating them about their roots, and the culture and habits of their “home” countries. Such events are repeated in a cyclical manner even when they are organized abroad.
When children first encounter the seasonal and cultural timescapes of their new country of residence, they compare them to their past experiences elsewhere. Individual children have personal and family-related memories of the past. In addition, they have been exposed to collective – for example, national or cultural – pasts, with parents, other adults and their previous schools often considering it important that children learn about these. Continuation is significant here, and it reaches into the future: when parents – in this case the international professionals – want to educate their children about the cultural and national events of their native countries, they want not only to cherish their pasts but also to prepare the children for their potential future return. All in all, although the children must become involved with timescapes related to the place where they currently reside, they may also be exposed to and active in timescapes related to their past and future places of residence. This illustrates the simultaneity of various timescapes in their lives and the fact that timescapes become tangible in actions, practices and relationships – time is not merely an abstract concept but a lived social reality.
Present: Time, agency and local mobility
Were the school days long in India?
The days were nine hours long. (Sonu)
In Finland, young children’s school day is shorter than in many other countries. For third graders, it lasts for 4–6 hours, totalling 22 hours a week. Only first and second graders are entitled to after-school care on school premises; older children spend their afternoons either with friends, non-working parents or on their own, or else in hobby groups that the families need to find for themselves. The relatively short school days can mean rather drastic changes in the everyday routines of children who move to Finland from abroad; it is not only their daily schedules that change but also their agency, since they spend more time outside the institutional timeframes of school.
Sophie Sarre, who has studied temporality among teenagers, writes that in the British context children typically gain sovereignty over their time use in their teenage years, with independent travel to and from school being a common rite of passage at this age (Sarre, 2013: 522–526). The degree of sovereignty in children’s lives, however, varies between countries, and the ability to travel to and from school independently is possible in Finland at an earlier age than in many other places.
I walked to school alone already on the second grade. It is very nice to walk alone. In Italy where I lived before, it would be impossible even for older children. (Marco)
Finland is considered a relatively safe country, and most 9-year-olds move around on their own – on foot, by bicycle or by bus. Therefore, children have plenty of agency in terms of their local mobilities, a fact that many of the participants emphasized when telling me how their life in Finland was different from life in other countries they had lived in. Therefore, in most cases, moving to Finland had meant significantly increased agency in terms of the children’s independent everyday mobility and, consequently, their use of time. Before coming to Finland, they had not been able to go out on their own, always having to be accompanied by an adult. This was not only because of their younger age but also because the localities where they lived were not as safe as Finnish towns. Most children I encountered during my fieldwork greatly appreciated their increased agency and freedom in regard to both mobility and their use of time: When I arrived in Finland, I thought it would be impossible for me to take a bus on my own. Now, I do it every day. It’s so easy and I like going alone.[. . .] Sometimes, we also book the video game room from the library with my friends and we go there together after school. (Sonu)
Finland thus provided the children with an entirely new timescape: that of short school days and independent local mobility. The children’s past experiences elsewhere made them particularly aware of this. This was a very significant change in their everyday lives, and some were concerned about losing this agency and free time if they moved away from Finland in the future. It is, therefore, not only the past but also the potential future mobility that affects their views in the present.
Uncertain futures: Transnational lives, ruptures and lack of agency
As was made evident at the very beginning of this article, the mobile professionals’ children know that they will leave Finland in the future. This affects their present lives in various ways.
First of all, engaging in competitive sports was much more common among those who were in Finland on a long-term basis compared with those who knew they would be moving on in the future. Goal-oriented sports training becomes difficult when children are transnationally mobile, since sports systems may work differently in different places or the particular activity may not be available at all. In fact, competitive sports seem to function in a similar institutional timescape to that of schools; the focus is on improving skills for the future, and ruptures along the path of progress cause problems. Getting into the top team or into the top coaching group is a long-term path with rigid milestones and it is difficult for a child who has previously trained abroad to take shortcuts in a new location. Interestingly, music studies seem to be easier to transfer from one country to another; some children I knew played an instrument in Finland that they had already played elsewhere. The timescapes of music training thus appear to be more flexible than those of sports training. Nevertheless, ruptures in the progressive path present challenges to hobby training and related timescapes, and moving from one country to another is always a rupture.
As has become evident, moving to Finland has meant greater agency in terms of their use of time for many children of international professionals. There are, however, various arenas in which the children do not have much agency and simply have to do what adults decide. Above all, they seldom have a say in when and where the family moves. During my fieldwork, the uncertainty, or unpredictability, of the future was a recurring theme:
Do you know now how long you will stay?
No, not yet. They [the employer] says how much time we should [stay], but they have not really told us. (Ajay)
Do you think your family is planning to stay in Finland or will you move somewhere else?
I think we are going to move in two years or more.
Where?
I don’t really know yet, but my dad’s company moves every seven years at the most. (Noel)
The work contracts of international professionals are usually fixed-term, and many families come to Finland with the intention of staying only temporarily. Quite often, the contracts are renewed and the families end up staying longer than they initially planned, but most of them leave eventually. Sometimes they also leave sooner than they had intended when life in Finland does not turn out as they had hoped (Korpela et al., 2017). The timing of their return or relocation is, however, usually unknown until it becomes a reality. As the interview extracts above illustrate, children are aware of the fact that they will not live in Finland permanently, yet they do not know when they will move away.
Interestingly, in the comments above it is not the parents who decide when and where the family moves but the parent(s)’ employers. This situation, in fact, aligns well with the notion of capitalist time, which refers to an understanding of time wherein employers have the ultimate power to control how much free time individuals have and how much time they have to use for work, to earn a living (Munn, 1992: 109). In the case of international professionals’ families, employers control not only their working time but, as seen in the comments above, the length of families’ stays in Finland and the timings of their transnational mobilities. In the children’s experience, their parent(s)’ employers appear as powerful actors who decide these things. Parents certainly have agency in these negotiations but the children’s view was that the decisions were in the hands of the employers alone. The ultimate timescale of their stay in Finland was thus imposed on them from above.
Finnish is difficult. I don’t want to study these words. It’s useless to study Finnish because I am going to move to a more interesting place in the future. (Lucas)
Although these children live very much in the present, focusing on their school, friends and hobbies, their knowledge of potential future mobilities affects their current views and actions. Above all, some children were not motivated to study Finnish even though it was a compulsory subject. As the extract above illustrates, some of them explicitly stated that they would not need the language in the future because they would be moving away. The timescale of the Finnish studies curriculum has a long-term aim: learning the language is seen as an important measure of integration into Finnish society in the long run. The curriculum does not recognize temporary stays, and individual pupils simply must adjust to this fact.
Having experienced ruptures in their paths and positions within various timescapes in the past makes the mobile professionals’ children particularly aware of the potentiality of such ruptures in the future. This, in turn, affects their views and actions in the present. Instead of seeing their becoming as a linear process – following the arrow of time – they rather view the future in terms of uncertainty, with the linearity and continuity being interrupted at some point. The institutional timescapes of schools, and for example of sports training, expect continuity but the children themselves expect ruptures since they know that, for them, the current timescapes are temporary.
Conclusion
In this article, I have argued that when children of mobile professionals move from one country to another, the timescapes within which they act change and, consequently, their agency may change too. In other words, timescapes are related to spaces and people, and when one moves from one space to another, also the timescapes within which one operates change. Agency, in turn, is crucial in timescape analysis because timescapes become a reality in people’s everyday lives and practices.
Institutional timescapes related to children’s lives often assume progressive linear continuity, especially in school systems. Mobile professionals’ children’s transnational mobility, however, produces ruptures and discontinuities in their position within such timescapes. The progressive linear timescape is particularly connected with the idea of children’s ‘becoming’, and ruptures in this path affect not only their present but potentially also their futures.
When negotiating different timescapes and their position and agency within these, the mobile professionals’ children reflect on their present situation in relation to both their past experiences and their potential future situations. These reflections happen from their position of mobility that makes them very aware of ruptures. Paying attention to ruptures thus makes visible the, at times, incommensurability of timescapes and also their simultaneity. Awareness of these issues can help families and schools to support children when they move between countries and education systems.
Timescape analysis provides a lens through which to investigate ruptures and discontinuities in mobile professionals’ children’s lives. I argue that time is not only a useful lens but, in fact, a necessary one in global childhood studies. Timescale analysis enriches studies on global childhoods since physical mobility is always connected to timescape mobility, which in turn affects children’s agency – or lack of it.
Footnotes
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The research was funded by the Research Council of Finland (Grant 322916).
