Reconfiguring child–adult relationships in foster care with implications for childhood studies

Abstract

Following the increasing interest within childhood studies towards critically reconsidering fundamental categories such as ‘child-actor’ and ‘context’, this paper explores what happens when the aspects of space and time are explicitly included in an analysis of enduring relationships between children and adults in foster care. With the help of the conceptual tool-set of agential realism the paper explores the potential of an ‘relational ontological’ analytical framework as a methodological contribution to childhood studies and particularly foster care research. This is illustrated by working analytically with two interview excerpts from a larger study about everyday relationship practices, defined as ‘kinning’, between children and adults within foster care. In engaging child–adult relationships as mutually constituted with elements such as space and time, multiple kinship practices within foster care are unfolded.