Revising the link between neighbourhoods and education: The case of well performing middle schools in Malmö

Abstract

How do neighbourhoods affect life chances? This is a question that researchers have asked in different forms as early as the 50’s –and there is no shortage of papers exploring neighbourhood effects: how where we live affects our well-being or our participation in the labour market, our life expectancy or, in general, our life outcomes. Yet, there is less consensus than one would expect from a field that has been this active: mechanisms are not clearly defined, methodologies are often one-sided, theoretical concepts are outdated and sometimes harmful for communities and contextuality of most kinds is surprisingly rare. In exploring and revising past research, this thesis proposes an interpretation of the phenomenon among others, through the lense of Bourdieu and Passeron’s reproduction of capital, and argues for a systematic perspective when trying to decipher neighbourhood effect mechanisms. To see the privileged side of neighbourhood segregation, the thesis sets out to find the combination of conditions sufficient/necessary to reach high educational outcomes in Malmö’s middle schools in 2018-2019 through the usage of the fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) mixed-method and then applying a within-case analysis to zoom in on the proposed mechanisms. The role of segregation in both housing and education is underlined. The result shows two paths for the High Educational Out-comes in Malmö that suggest a need for a more systematic approach to segregation, both educational and residential. That approach should also lay an big focus on information inequalities, especially when it comes to making choices on which educational outcomes depend. Educational Success is therefore achieved in majority Swedish neighbourhoods that have high disposable income, in schools that are in all instances segregated and in most privately owned and/or have classes with highly educated parents.

Popular Abstract

How important is where we live for the outcomes of our lives? This paper explores if and how schools in certain residential areas form specific patterns that hint to a systemic malfunction. There is always talk about the poor areas, the low performing schools and the responsibilities communities have for educating themselves –but it has been proven that it has oftentimes been insensitive and too normative towards vulnerable communities. While often individuals and policies alike blame segregated communities for their outcomes, there is less room for the discussion about the fact that ethnically and low-income segregated neighbourhoods are formed because the more vulnerable individuals are excluded from certain areas and institutions. One of the goals of this study is to also look at how the communities have been talked about and studied in past research and point to a need for revision, which is addressed both through the theory and method of the thesis. The exclusion of certain groups based on income and/or ethnicity includes but is not limited to the education system. The thesis shows that in the Swedish city of Malmö in 2019 middle-schools where attendance is almost a guarantee of a good result are segregated from lower socio-economic individuals. Moreover, educational segregation is closely linked to the neighbourhood segregation: the conditions chosen for the analysis showed that schools that perform well are in majority Swedish neighbourhoods where the average disposable in-come is high. Those schools are in all cases segregated from pupils with a foreign background and are most of the times privately owned. Although many have praised the privatization of both the education and the housing market, the result seems to be a deepening of inequalities between rich and poor. While, in theory, all parents could make the same choice for their child, in practice, information and resource inequality form a unignorable obstacle. Moreover, by positioning themselves in rich, Swedish neigh-bourhoods, privately owned schools (who are more flexible than municipally owned ones) manage to exclude pupils with more diverse needs resulting in helping them turn a profit at the end of the school year. Because lower income individuals have a hard time entering good neighbourhoods because hous-ing in both Malmö and Sweden is getting more and more exclusive, educational inequalities become larger.

• author: Moraru, Andreea Valentina
• supervisor: Christopher Swader
• organization: Department of Sociology; Sociology
• course: SOCM04 20211
• year: 2021
• type: H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
• subject: Social Sciences
• keywords: Neighbourhood effects, Education, Malmö, fsQCA, privatisation of education, Qualitative Comparative Analysis
• language: English
• id: 9064951
• date added to LUP: 2021-09-07 14:02:16
• date last changed: 2021-09-07 14:02:16