TY - JOUR

T1 - Re‐imaging everyday routines and educational aspirations under COVID‐19 lockdown

T2 - Narratives of urban middle‐class children in Punjab, India

AU - Barn, Ravinder

AU - Sandhu, Damanjit

AU - Mukherjee, Utsa

PY - 2022/5/4

Y1 - 2022/5/4

N2 - Based on in-depth interviews with 24 middle-class Indian child participants, this is the first exploratory qualitative study, in India, to demonstrate the ways in which children as reflexive social actors re-negotiated everyday schedules, drew on classed resources at their disposal and made sense of the impact of the pandemic on their educational pathways and future aspirations. These narratives offer a unique lens on the politics of middle-classness and its constitutive relation to constructions of normative childhoods in contemporary India. Study findings contribute to the sociology of Indian childhood and more generally help enrich our understanding of southern childhoods and the reproduction of inequalities in contemporary India.

AB - Based on in-depth interviews with 24 middle-class Indian child participants, this is the first exploratory qualitative study, in India, to demonstrate the ways in which children as reflexive social actors re-negotiated everyday schedules, drew on classed resources at their disposal and made sense of the impact of the pandemic on their educational pathways and future aspirations. These narratives offer a unique lens on the politics of middle-classness and its constitutive relation to constructions of normative childhoods in contemporary India. Study findings contribute to the sociology of Indian childhood and more generally help enrich our understanding of southern childhoods and the reproduction of inequalities in contemporary India.

KW - children's everyday life, COVID- 19, education, India, middle- class childhood

U2 - http://doi.org/10.1111/chso.12571

DO - http://doi.org/10.1111/chso.12571

M3 - Article

SP - 1

JO - Children and Society

JF - Children and Society

ER -