Research project How neighbourhood, school and crime redirect the individual’s life course
This project investigates how spatial context, that is, neighbourhood, school, and crime rates in the environment, shapes young people's educational achievements and life course trajectories.
What factors redirect youth toward school failure or criminal behaviour? How do residential and school environments influence futures?
Using Swedish longitudinal registry data (1990-2023), we identify distinct life trajectories through latent class analysis, then map geographical environments by spatially mapping trajectories. Structural equation modelling reveals how school quality, neighbourhood crime, and neighbourhood peers influence educational success.
Special attention is given to second-generation immigrants and neighbourhood effects. We identify protective school and neighbourhood factors that mitigate environmental disadvantages, how positive school environments reduce the impact of living in challenging areas. By comparing youth in vulnerable and non-vulnerable areas, we provide policymakers with evidence-based insights for interventions addressing segregation consequences: school dropout and crime exposure.
We will use quantitative methods with register data to understand relationships between segregation, inequality, education, and crime.
Figure 1. Conceptual model structure. This diagram explains how different factors influence educational achievement and life course outcomes. It shows that peer crime, school peers, neighbourhood, and family are all exposures that affect school, which is an unobserved factor. School then influences educational achievement, which in turn affects life course outcomes. Neighbourhood and family also have direct effects on educational achievement and life course. The arrows represent causal paths, showing how these factors are connected and influence each other over time. The colour coding distinguishes exposures, outcomes, ancestors of exposures and outcomes, and different types of variables, helping to clarify the relationships in this model. This helps understand how social and environmental factors contribute to education and long-term life course trajectories.
Trondheim, Norway. Photo: Eva Andersson
Ivry-sur-Seine, France. Photo: Eva Andersson.
Île Saint-Louis. Photo: Eva Andersson.