Vi och dom i skola och stadsdel : Barns identitetsarbete och sociala geografier

The thesis is an ethnographic study of children’s identity work and social geographies in the schools and neighbourhoods of a Swedish suburb. The aim of the reported research is to study children’s agency and their narratives of different places. The findings show how identity work can be understood from the viewpoint of children as social agents taking part in reconstructing their own social geographies. It is the social aspect of the identity work that is the focus here and how it is a relational process constructed in interaction in different contexts. In the analyses, the children’s agency and narratives, such as interviews, maps and photographs, are seen as identity performances. The findings show how identity work is situated. Identity work takes place in places that invite participation in various activities but these places are also constructed by the children and their identity work. The construction of us and them is a continuous process whereby the children (re)construct both structural conditions and conditions of a more local character. The children construct both shared and segregated places in the school yard, while performing as “us-in-the-school class”, “best friends” or “football player”, as well as more traditional categories such as age, ethnicity, gender and social class. The results also show the close relation between school and neighbourhood, and how segregation between two neighbourhoods in the suburb increased because of school choice. Children from middle-class areas took part in reconstructing the multiethnic neighbourhood as a no-go area and one of the schools as a no-go school. In the narratives of their neighbourhood, the children used community discourses when making identity claims such as “rich Swedish kids from Tallvik”. Thus, segregation and identity work are intimately connected when children construct an us, in close relation with some and distanced to others at the same time