The “exceptional situation”, declared by the Swiss Federal Council in March 2020, marked the beginning of a pandemic era and accompanying social changes, including the exacerbation of existing inequalities. The school closures that were subsequently introduced as a measure of pandemic management significantly affected schooling and the everyday lives of families. The “prescribed retreat into the private sphere” (Speck, 2020, p. 135) explicitly and forcibly changed the place of family to a place of education. Family routines structured themselves anew, the activation and responsibilisation policies directed at parents (Jergus et al., 2018; Oelkers, 2012) intensified. This subsequently led to negotiations between children and their parents, between teachers and parents and between parents themselves, and affected the well-being of all family members. In addition to the shifting educational responsibilities, state measures around COVID-19 were also taken up and adapted by families. Such a governmental crisis management disciplines the bodies of the citizens, as conceptualized by Foucault (1994) prominently. The imposed disciplinary measures take place pastorally, i.e. through appeals to the “conscience of the individual”, “their civic discipline” and ”solidarity” (Duncker, 2020): one should fulfil a nationally formulated task, “be a good citizen and contribute to keeping the curve flat by observing precautionary measures” (ibid., 94). But how did the families, the parents, and the children take up and implement these demands during the pandemic? How do families relate to family norms and norms of good parenting in relation to educational responsibilities on the one hand, and to the invocations of ‘being a good citizen in pandemic times’ on the other?

With our contribution we ask about these tensions and discuss representations and performative acts of “displaying good family” (Finch, 2007) and “displaying good citizen” (Gilliam, 2021) in pandemic times. We take the empirical basis from our research project “Childhoods and School in (Post-)Lockdown (KiSPoLock)”, which is being conducted at the Centre for Childhood in Education and Society at the Zurich University of Teacher Education, as a starting point. In early summer 2020, children and their parents were interviewed in semi-structured interviews about their experiences before, during and after the first COVID-19-related school lockdown in Switzerland. The interpretative analyses point to complex negotiation processes that took place within the families during these weeks. We pay special attention to the fact that the need for displaying good family and good citizen is not always immediately given. Especially families struggling for recognition in their everyday life since ever are particularly exposed to the constraints of referring to family and citizen norms.

The project is in line with a qualitative, interpretative research tradition and explores experiences of families and children during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Switzerland. The data corpus consists of 19 semi-structured interviews with families, conducted in summer 2020. We interviewed families with different social and economic backgrounds, with different national belongings, with and without experiences with migration and with different family constellations like single, married or remarried parents. The interview data has been analysed hermeneutically, while perspectives of family studies (Finch, 2007; Morgan, 2011) in combination with governmentality theory (Foucault, 1994, 2010) have been applied as sensitizing theoretical concepts.

The findings indicate that families’ narratives about their experiences during the pandemic include references to norms of good parenting, good family and good citizenship. The pandemic can be understood as a context that appeals to our interview partners to narratively perform as responsible families and reliable citizens, following the biopolitical regulations. In addition to this socio-political context, the vulnerable positionings of some of the families regarding hegemonic family norms as well as regarding their status as a citizen within the context of migration regimes play an important role for experiencing and narrating the beginning of the pandemic. The findings will be reflected by assuming the powerful interplay of biopolitical regulations and social relations of inequality.

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