Charlotta Hedberg

Translocal Ruralism: Mobility and Connectivity in European Rural Spaces

If you imagine a rural space, you might think of the wide fields of an agricultural landscape, or the vast, forested parts of a sparsely populated region. Perhaps you think about small villages or townscapes, or an isolated house in a remote region. Rural spaces are often associated with an agricultural economy, outmigration and an ageing, decreasing population. This imaginary rural area is isolated from national and global processes, and is dependent on the proximate urban area.

Entrance, Exit and Exclusion: Labour Market Flows of Foreign Born Adults in Swedish "Divided Cities"

International migrants often occupy subordinate positions in the labour market or are excluded from it. Based on unique longitudinal data, this article investigates the socioeconomic mobility of the foreign-born adult population in two Swedish cities in the period 1993—2002. Patterns of entrance, exit and exclusion pertaining to the labour of foreign-born and native-born populations are compared, focusing on variations between ‘distressed’ neighbourhoods and surrounding city-regions. The results reveal that the foreign-born population experiences a high labour turnover, generally with increasing employment stability, but that considerable vulnerability still remains. However, surprisingly small differences were found between residents of ‘distressed’ and other neighbourhoods. Hence, ethnic rather than residential status influenced the employment situation of foreign-born adults in Swedish cities.

When the World Goes Rural: Transnational Potentials of International Migration in Rural Swedish Labour Markets

International migration processes are of increasing importance to changing ruralities in high-income countries. They offer the chance to connect rural areas to the world through direct links of transnational networks, and they have the potential for dynamic change. Through migration, important fields of social, economic and institutional transnational networks directly intersect with local areas. Accordingly, not only the demographic structure but also qualitative aspects of the countryside can be influenced by international migration. This chapter investigates the transnational effects of international migration on local labour markets in rural Sweden, analysing the transnational networks and transnational potential of international migrants in the labour market, based on interviews with three different groups of actors: local authorities, local firms and migrant entrepreneurs. Accordingly, the chapter analyses rural areas as connected by transnational linkages of international labour, which ties rural areas to other international localities in a process of global upscaling of rural space.

Identity in Motion : The Process of Finland-Swedish Migration to Sweden

This article examines how identities among Finland-Swedish migrants change in the process of contemporary migration between Finland and Sweden. An approach of mixed methods is adopted in order to reveal both patterns of settling in Sweden or returning to Finland and mechanisms of the migrants’ identity construction. Through migration, identifications are contested. The findings suggest that in Sweden the Finlandian national identity initially grows stronger, but weakens over time. Finland-Swedish identity is transformed into an important feature on the personal, instead of the ethnic group, level. For the returnees, the Finland-Swedish ethnic identity is often enhanced. The migrants’ different levels of identity are found to be linked to various scales of space, underlining the regionally distinct characteristics of the Finland-Swedish identity.

‘Neighbourhood Effects’ and ‘City Effects’: The Entry of Newly Arrived Immigrants into the Labour Market

An important debate in current research and policy focuses on the role of urban residential segregation on the social mobility of immigrants. Much focus has been on ‘neighbourhood effects’ and on how spatial variations within the city affect individual careers. This paper adds the analysis of variations of labour market incorporation between cities. The labour market careers of one migrant cohort to Sweden are analysed, where the analysis of ‘neighbourhood effects’ and ‘city effects’ are studied jointly, using a longitudinal database and discrete-time event history analysis. The results show that labour market participation increases slowly over time and there are large variations due to migrant origin, gender and education. Both ‘neighbourhood effects’ and ‘city effects’ were significant, but whereas the former decreased over time, the ‘city effect’ was robust. Accordingly, contextual aspects of the individual city need to be included in the analysis of neighbourhood effects.

‘Doing gender’ in the wild berry industry: Transforming the role of Thai women in rural Sweden 1980–2012

‘Doing gender’ has often been used as the theoretical entrance for research on gender issues in the social sciences. However, research has been accused of using the concept in a ‘ceremonial’ way, treating gendered structures as static. In response to this claim, this article investigates the process of ‘hierarchization’, or how gendered and racial hierarchies occur through everyday practices and political and economic contexts in the rural, wild berry industry in contemporary Sweden. The industry has gone through a thorough transformation, from irregular and small-scale production to regularized and large-scale production, which has affected the intersection of gender and racial structures. In particular, Thai women have gone from being active participants both as entrepreneurs and as workers, to working under native men, or being passive receivers of men’s remittances. The mechanisms behind the intersection of gender and racial structures are a complex interplay of economic, social and institutional factors, which act on nested global, national and translocal scales.