I am a sociologist working on social trajectories, with a particular focus on how processes of integration, mobility, and inequality unfold over time. My research combines structural and processual perspectives to examine how social conditions are incorporated into dispositions, and how these are reproduced, strained, and reconfigured across the life course.

Since completing my PhD at the University of British Columbia—where I examined the structural integration and intergroup dynamics of two minority groups in Paris across two generations—my work has developed along two interconnected strands. One strand explores how institutional arrangements and place-based contexts shape migrants’ opportunities for integration and access to resources. A second strand focuses on the psychosocial and dispositional dynamics of social mobility, examining how aspirations, attachments, and orientations toward the future are formed, negotiated, and transformed over time.

Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology of practice, and extending it through processual and psychosocial perspectives, I am particularly interested in the affective dynamics through which social dispositions are acquired and sustained, but also in how moments of tension or misalignment between individuals and their social environments can give rise to shifts in dispositions and trajectories.

I joined the Department of Education at Stockholm University in 2024, where I am currently involved in two major research projects. Since 2024, I have been collaborating on a project funded by Formas that explores how varying local reception contexts shape the educational trajectories of newcomer youth in Sweden. Since 2025, I have also been leading the project After Optimism, funded by the Swedish Research Council, which examines how ambitious educational choices among youth from educationally disadvantaged migrant backgrounds emerge, evolve, and are experienced over time.

Recent publications

Ivemark, B. (2024) “Feeling the Squeeze: Parental Expectations and Educational Experiences of Low-SES College Students from Immigrant Backgrounds” in Migrant Youth, Schooling and Identity: Experiences and Perspectives from Northern Europe, edited by N. Hammarén, B. Ivemark, & L. Stretmo. Cham: Springer

Hammarén, N., Ivemark, B. & Stretmo, L. (eds.). (2024). Migrant Youth, Schooling and Identity: Perspectives from Northern Europe. Cham: Springer

Ivemark B. & Ambrose, A. (2023) “From Doxic Breach to Cleft Habitus: Affect, Reflexivity and Dispositional Disjunctures” British Journal of Sociology of Education, 44(5): 944-961. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/ 01425692.2023.2209286

Ivemark, B. & Ambrose, A. (2021) “Habitus Adaptation and Adjustment to Higher Education among Swedish First-Generation Students: A Life Course Perspective” Sociology of Education, 94(3), 191-207. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F00380407211017060 

Ambrose, A. & Ivemark, B. (2020) “Linjen mellan högstadiet och högre utbildning: En fallstudie om breddad rekrytering och breddat deltagande.” Forskningsrapport, Örebro universitet.

Roth, W.D. & Ivemark, B. (2018) “Genetic Options: The Impact of Genetic Ancestry Testing on Consumers’ Racial and Ethnic Identities” American Journal of Sociology, 124(1): 150-184. https://doi.org/10.1086/697487

Zuberi, D, Ivemark, B. & Ptashnick, M. (2018) “Lagging Behind in Suburbia: Suburban versus Urban Newcomers’ Employment Settlement Service Outcomes in Metro Vancouver, Canada” The Social Science Journal, 55(4): 443-454. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.soscij.2018.03.001

Ivemark, B. (2017) “Bleu Blanc Noir: Assimilation Trajectories, Identity Dynamics, and Boundary Work of French Antilleans, West Africans, and their Children in Paris” Doctoral Dissertation, University of British Columbia, Canada.