Ensuring children’s rights, protecting them from discrimination, violence, and vulnerabilities, as well as engaging in sustained pedagogical work, is a central function of early childhood institutions.This contribution discusses the unequal distribution of legitimacy in the field of early childhood, focusing on both the social position of professionals and the political place of childhood.The devaluation of educators is part of a structural regime that naturalizes the association between care and femininity, producing an economy of power-knowledge that disqualifies practices associated with women and with childhood, recurrently framed within a logic of incompleteness. The work of educators is positioned within the sphere of the non-professional or semi-professional, particularly when contrasted with the recognized expertise of health and psychology professionals.In many contexts, limiting educator training to the technical level further reinforces simplification and deprofessionalization, weakening both educators’ professional status and children’s rights.The workshop will engage participants in exploring how early childhood education demands and produces professional knowledge that is dynamic, situated, and relational, rather than purely technical or protocol-driven. Participants will be presented with short scenes from early childhood settings (photographs, mini-stories, or videos) illustrating situations in which children, educators, materials and environments interact, highlighting how vulnerabilities and learning are co-produced.

Objectives

• Engage with the complexity of childhood through sociology of childhood and posthumanism
• Recognise the unequal distribution of legitimacy in early childhood and its consequences for the co-production of social vulnerability