Stefan LundProfessor
About me
Stefan Lund is a professor in the Department of Education at Stockholm University, Sweden. His research interests include educational policy, school choice, school culture, symbolic boundaries, multicultural incorporation, and sociology of sports. He has, for example, published Immigrant incorporation, Education and the boundaries of belonging (2020), School Choice, Ethnic Divisions and Symbolic Boundaries (2015) and articles in Journal of Education Policy, Sociology of Sports and Sports, Education and Society.
Lund is the research leader of a four year project about school desegregation: "Municipality Strategies for Integrated Schools: Imposed desegregation of schools for transformative social change". A critical mass of studies in Sweden show that residential segregation in combination with school choice polices lead to increased school segregation. This trend is seen most vividly in large and mid-sized cities. However, as an unintended and unplanned outcome of the ‘2015 migration crisis,’ school segregation in Sweden is no longer solely an urban phenomenon. Given the growing national concern over school segregation, municipalities have begun to actively implement desegregation policies in order to meet the goals of equality put forth by the Swedish School Law. The project studies three forms of school desegregation: merging, closing and opening in compulsory schooling. The aim is to investigate the barriers to and effects of desegregation from different vantage points, in particular, the interrelation between political motives, school culture and pedagogy, parents’ (re)actions, children’s social interaction and school achievements. The study adopts a cultural sociological perspective where the notion of symbolic inclusion is critical in making sense of the policy and its consequences for the stakeholders in the process of desegregation. The project will use diverse qualitative methods, including document analysis, ethnographic observations and interviews with local politicians, officials, headmasters, teachers, children and parents in addition to advance our knowledge of the possibilities for transformative social change and potential risks associated with school desegregation.
Research projects
Publications
A selection from Stockholm University publication database
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Immigrant incorporation, Education and the Boundaries of Belonging
2020. Stefan Lund.
Book (ed)Read more about Immigrant incorporation, Education and the Boundaries of BelongingIn this edited volume, authors analyze how symbolic boundaries of belonging are negotiated and reflected upon by school actors in different educational contexts and how that contributes to a richer understanding of the ways in which "we-ness" acts as a fundamentally structuring force in immigrant incorporation. The analyses draw on cultural sociologist Jeffrey Alexander's work on civil sphere theory, thus grasping both the solidaristic dimensions of incorporation and processes of exclusion. Chapters are guided by two major themes: school choice/ethnic school segregation and religion/faith in schooling. Both of these themes provide rich examples of how immigrant school actors negotiate the symbolic codes that define boundaries of belonging/non-belonging in different communities. This focus will broaden the understanding of how educational practices and formal schooling works in relation to immigrant incorporation into different school cultures, as well as in the Swedish civil sphere.
Show all publications by Stefan Lund at Stockholm University