Eric Kimathi

• Steen-Johnsen, Tale; Skreland, Lisbeth Ljosdal & Kimathi, Eric (2026). Trauma-Based Care as Marginalising Practice. In Piazza, Roberta; Ringrow, Helen; Maruenda-Bataller, Sergio & Gregori-Signes, Carmen (Ed.), The Language of Marginality and Subjectivity in a Global Context. Bloomsbury Academic. ISSN 9781350448582. p. 37–54. doi: 10.5040/9781350448612.ch-2. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  In this article, we discuss in what ways trauma-informed care (TIC) can be understood as a marginalising practice. Trauma-informed care is an interactional approach to care based on attachment theory and neuroscience and is becoming a widely used tool in institutions caring for children and youth (Jørgensen 2013: 10). Through a study of kindergarten teachers who have been trained in TIC, we describe how the use of this approach takes precedence over other pedagogical principles. Although we acknowledge that attention to trauma is based on good intentions and potentially helpful for traumatised children, we suggest that attention to trauma runs the risk of influencing everyday practices and understandings of children and childhoods in kindergartens as well as categorising an entire social group. Understanding TIC as a discursive social technology enables us to interrogate the political power behind it as a tool meant to ensure that a specific social group is enabled to participate in society. This article explores how the TIC discourse influences refugee children’s capacity to interact actively, equitably and productively in the societies in which they take part.

• Kimathi, Eric (2025). Under the Watch of the State? Refugee Parents’ Experiences with Surveillance in Norwegian Early Childhood Education Centers. Nordic Journal of Migration Research. 15(3). doi: 10.33134/njmr.602. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This article investigates refugee parents’ experiences with surveillance by early childhood education and care (ECEC) professionals in Norway on the basis of semi-structured interviews with 15 parents from refugee backgrounds. The findings reveal that these parents feel their parenting abilities are viewed with suspicion by ECEC professionals. This suspicion can lead to increased surveillance, causing parents to fear extensive state intervention in their private family lives. The study shows that parents resort to impression management strategies, including projecting conformity and engaging in open dialogue, to mitigate concerns about their parenting abilities. Their goal is to reduce suspicion and achieve minimal welfare state surveillance and intervention in their family lives.

• Kimathi, Eric (2023). Tensions of Difference in Integrating Refugee Children in Norwegian ECEC Centers. Nordisk barnehageforskning (NBF). 20(4), p. 43–62. doi: 10.23865/nbf.v20.409. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This article explores the tensions that arise in the integration process of refugee children in Norwegian ECEC centres. For many refugee children, ECEC centres form the first public institution where they learn about the norms and values outside of their homes. Using institutional ethnography as a method of inquiry, data was gathered using semi-structured interviews with ECEC professionals, focusing on how they interact with refugee children and how they do everyday integration work. The article adopts the concept of the "civilizing process" by Norbert Elias as the overarching analytical concept. The findings reveal that integration of refugee children involves tensions in negotiating language, civilising children into Norwegian ideals of childhood, and civilising parents into the Norwegian cultural ideal of parenting.

• Kimathi, Eric (2023). Negotiating positionality within institutional ethnography as a non-native researcher in Norway. In Magnussen, May-Linda & Nilsen, Ann Christin Eklund (Ed.), Erfaringer med institusjonell etnografi. Cappelen Damm Akademisk. ISSN 9788202714840. p. 251–268. doi: 10.23865/noasp.195.ch12. Full text in Research Archive
• Kimathi, Eric (2022). The construction of a ‘traumatized’ refugee child in need of safety in Norwegian kindergartens. Journal of Comparative Social Work. 17(2), p. 53–78. doi: 10.31265/jcsw.v17.i2.386. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This paper explores how kindergarten teachers relate to the concept of safety in the integration of refugee children. My research findings reveal that the concept of safety, or trygghet in Norwegian, is understood as emotional support and comfort accorded to children. The notion of trygghet emerges as an important value-laden concept that shapes and largely influences teachers’ everyday work, and how they relate to children and their parents. The idea of safety is traceable within an institutional discourse mediated by social technology, such as the International Child Development Programme and the Resource Centre for Violence and Trauma programmes, which have their roots in psy-discourses. My findings indicate that the construction of a potentially ‘traumatized’ refugee child is interconnected with the assumed need for safety. When using this discourse in their daily work, the kindergarten staff contribute to constructing and reproducing a specific category that I refer to as the ‘traumatized’ refugee child in need of safety. This standardized understanding risks categorizing refugee children, and highlights how professionals can get caught up in dominant discourses that universalize their routine practices.

• Kimathi, Eric & Nilsen, Ann Christin Eklund (2021). Managing categories: The role of social technology in kindergarten teachers’ work to promote early intervention and integration. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood. p. 1–13. doi: 10.1177/14639491211045419. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Early intervention and integration are highly valued ideals in kindergartens in Norway. Building on two research projects informed by institutional ethnography, the authors address how kindergarten teachers ‘do’ early intervention and integration in their everyday work. They argue that this work largely revolves around managing categories, whether making categories fit people or making people fit categories. In this work, the kindergarten teachers rely on social technology that is influenced by a ‘psy-discourse’. Despite good intentions, the social technology and the professionals’ use of it ends up constructing the categories they are intended to help or ‘heal’.

View all works in NVA

• Kimathi, Eric (2024). An institutional ethnographic study on the social organisation of integration work in Norwegian ECEC Centers. Universitetet i Agder. ISSN 9788284271873. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  In this article-based dissertation, I explore the social organisation of integration work in Norwegian Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) centers. This thesis begins from the standpoint of ECEC professionals as entry-level participants and refugee parents as second-level participants. Institutional ethnography has been used as the overarching methodological and theoretical approach. The concepts of ruling relations and work knowledge from institutional ethnography combined abductively with other theoretical concepts, namely, the civilising process (civilising institutions), stigma, impression management, and making up of people comprise the overall theoretical framework of this thesis. This study employs explorative institutional ethnographic qualitative methods, and its findings and analyses are presented in four articles. The aims of this study are to explore the institutional complex within which integration is organised from the standpoint of ECEC professionals as entry-level participants and to explore the institutional complex within which integration in ECEC centers is organised from the standpoint of refugee parents as second-level participants. The main research question for this study is: How is the integration of refugees in ECEC centres socially organised from the standpoint of ECEC professionals and refugee parents? The study has other specific research questions that are addressed in each of the four respective articles. …

View all works in NVA