Stockholm university

Research project The Neighbourhood Revisited: Spatial polarization and social cohesion in contemporary Sweden

Research programme 2019-2024.

Karta av Pontus Hennerdal

The six-year research programme “The Neighbourhood Revisited: Spatial polarization and social cohesion in contemporary Sweden” explores the extent to which spatial polarization produces a society that is increasingly polarized in attitudes, valuations, life styles and behaviour and, thus, less socially cohesive.

Stockholm University has obtained a large six-year grant from the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (RJ), the Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences, for the research programme “The Neighbourhood Revisited: Spatial polarization and social cohesion in contemporary Sweden”. The programme is coordinated by Bo Malmberg, Department of Human Geography.

Project description

The Neighbourhood Revisited - Summary of research programme

This program explores the extent to which spatial polarization produces a society that is increasingly polarized in attitudes, valuations, life styles and behaviour and, thus, less socially cohesive.

Our focus will be on neighbourhoods as locales for social interaction, socialization, identity formation, and for building social capital. If neighbourhoods, through a process of spatial sorting, come to consist of communities with very different social composition there is a risk that societywide common values and solidarity between groups cannot be established. Spatial polarization can produce neighbourhoods with concentrations of socially marginalized individuals that provide poor contexts for social integration. The research program uses a novel approach to social classification based on lifecourse patterns in education, income, employment, and family formation.

Three broad questions will be addressed:

  •  To what extent do individuals that follow similar life course trajectories tend to cluster into similar neighbourhoods?
  • To what extent are individuals’ attitudes formed in and influenced by their neighbourhood residential context?
  • To what extent are the adult life courses of children and adolescents influenced by their exposure to different types of neighbourhoods during childhood?

Further, the program considers how neighbourhoods change their composition over time and how such dynamics influence people’s attitudes and well-being.

Project members

Members

Marianne Abramsson

Professor

Department of Human Geography
Marianne Abramsson

Eva Andersson

Professor

Department of Human Geography
Eva K. Andersson

Gunnar Andersson

Professor of Demography

Department of Sociology
Gunnar Andersson

Ida Borg

Researcher

Department of Human Geography
Ida Borg 2022

Maria Brandén

Senior Associate Professor

The Institute for Analytical Sociology (IAS) , Department of Management and Engineering (IEI)
Maria Branden

Danielle Drozdzewski

Senior Lecturer, Docent

Department of Human Geography
Danielle Drozdzewski

Helen Eriksson

Researcher

Department of Sociology
Helen Eriksson

Sara Forsberg

Postdoc

Department of Human Geography

Karen Haandrikman

Professor

Department of Human Geography
Karen Haandrikman

Sofi Johansson

PhD student

Department of Human Geography
Sofi

Juta Kawalerowicz

Senior Lecturer

Department of Human Geography
Juta Kawalerowicz

Hernan Mondani

Researcher, Docent in Sociology

Department of Sociology
Foto Mondani

Eleonora Mussino

Researcher, Docent

Department of Sociology
Eleonora Mussino. Photo: Leila Zoubir/Stockholm University

Gerda Neyer

Researcher

Department of Sociology
Gerda Neyer.

Thomas Niedomysl

Researcher, Docent

Department of Human Geography

Per Strömblad

Professor

Department of Political Science, Lund University
Per Strömblad

Caroline Uggla

Researcher

Department of Sociology
Caroline Uggla. foto: Elin Sahlin

Natasha Webster

Forskare

Department of Human Geography
Natasha Webster

Ben Wilson

Researcher, Docent

Department of Sociology
Ben Wilson. Photo: Leila Zoubir/Stockholm University

Thomas Wimark

Docent

Department of Human Geography
Thomas Wimark