Desirable Places: Spatial Representations And Educational Strategies In The Inner City

Author(s):

Elisabeth Hultqvist(presenting / submitting)Eric Larsson(presenting)

Conference:

ECER 2015

Network:

28. Sociologies of Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

28 SES 08 B, Space, Inequalities and Education

Paper Session

Time:

2015-09-10

09:00-10:30

Room:

105.Oktatóterem [C]

Chair:

Terri Seddon

Contribution

Urban space has emerged as a fierce marketplace for in-between school competition – especially in the case of Stockholm (National Agency of Education 2011), due to the educational reforms in the early 1990´s in which neoliberal equivalence of schooling was incorporated into the educational system by means of decentralization, free-schools and a voucher based school choice arrangement (Blomqvist, Rothstein 2008). While competition between schools at a local level still exists, it has extended vastly since pupils – according to policy – can use their vouchers to choose more or less unrestricted amongst all upper-secondary schools in the county, dependent on the grades they receive in secondary school. During the period 1997 to 2012 the number of upper-secondary schools accelerated from 21 to 53 in the inner city of Stockholm. Most of these schools were newly established free-schools, in fact during the same period the number of free-schools increased from 7 to 41 while the total number of enrolled at free-schools pupils likewise reached a top level in 2011 with 20 827 (11 375 in the year of 1997). (Larsson, 2014).

While pupils nowadays commute throughout the whole region to attend school, the more affluent inner city attracts most attention. The same applies to the increasing proportion of schools occupying inner city areas, transforming it into a “hot-spot” for schooling. In contrast school districts in outer-city regions (Broady, Börjesson 2006; Palme 2008), and more acutely, socially stigmatized residential areas – with a large population of low-income and multi-ethnic groups – experience an extensive loss of pupils. However, this development does not seem to be the direct outcome of quality differences in schooling as some researchers argue (Sandström, Bergström, 2005), rather the impact of what Loic Wacquant calls the ‘socio-symbolic landscape’ (Wacquant, 2015).

This project aims to study how inner city upper-secondary schools and their pupils use representations of space and place as authenticating distinguished markers and forms of symbolic entitlement thereby ensuring and consecrating their position on the educational market. We do this by analysing 1) the way inner city upper-secondary schools use their location and the different characteristics of the inner city [spatial representations] in relation to time and space, as a comparative advantage and market strategy in the fierce in-between school competition. 2) How pupils familiarity with, and representations of the inner city and the order of upper-secondary schools affects their educational strategies.

Since the changes in urban development and schooling are unequal, we have to discuss them in a relational sense (Bourdieu 1999). Thus, to fully grasp the educational strategies deployed by pupils and inner city schools we need to contextualise them within the frame of urban development. As such educational strategies and choice making as well as the desirability that certain schools gain ought to be perceived as dependent on the positions they receive in the field of education (Bourdieu 1984, 1989). We need to consider the dispositions of cultural, economic and social capital that certain groups possess to understand the choices and statements they make, and also the social identities they take on in relation to other groups (Bourdieu 1985). It is the struggle for the field specific symbolic capital that is at stake – the distinction of excellence and the power to outline what should be credited or discredited (Bourdieu 1991, 1996). However, some scholars claim that choice making and strategies in some ways go beyond the disposition of capital today, arguing that they also depend on the way pupils “master” their “experience of school” (Dubet 2000; Hultqvist 2010).

Method

The data collection consists of webpages, marketing-booklets and field-notes from 50 different upper-secondary schools and interviews with 25 pupils. All data have been gathered from schools located within the inner city of Stockholm. The pupils attend six different schools, three of which could be characterized as elite (in a Swedish context) with high admission criteria. The webpages, marketing-booklets and field notes concern descriptions of space and place, i.e. spatial representations. In the context of neoliberal education reforms we consider these spatial representations as features of promotion and marketing. Not retreating from the Bourdieuian framework we also draw on the following tools to analyse the use of spatial representations: 1. Elements of Critical Discourse Analysis Discourse should be regarded as ‘semiotic ways of construing aspects of the world (physical, social or mental) which can generally be identified with different positions or perspectives of different groups of social actors’ hereby acknowledging the connection between structure and agent within certain fields of struggle i.e. ‘social practice’ (Fairclaugh, 2010). Fairclough relates to this process by the use of concepts such as ‘genre’ representing ‘ways of acting and interacting’ and ‘style’ representing ‘ways of being’ (ibid.). To put this in a more practical framework: discourse, in this case, mediates and orientates the way agents relate to and represent the inner city upper secondary schools in an ongoing struggle to define the dominant view of preferable schooling. 2. Accumulation of collective urban representations Suttles (1984) on the other hand gives us the tools to analyse space and place through a cumulative process, regarding certain locations as full of ‘collective representations’. Thus, space and place are outlined from layers of representations, new and old, accumulated in the narration of urbanity and city landscape. In sum, we should hereby regard spatial representations as constructed from the agents dispositions and position in social space, percolated into the images of the ‘socio-symbolic landscape’ (Wacquant, 2015) as well as created through the cumulative public process which stabilises the diverging parts of the city. This analysis contains four identified, central elements that – in various degrees – continuously are used to signify the symbolic power of space and place. These elements are not mutually exclusive and are frequently used together, promoting or expressing spatial representations. We call these nodes of culture, nature, consumption and [built] physical milieu.

Expected Outcomes

Place and space give rise to prominent ways of distinction, which firmly could be seen in accelerating numbers of inner city, upper-secondary schools and pupils attending them. Accordingly inner city schools and their pupils use spatial representations as part of their educational strategies, declaring the distinguishing features of the school´s location to authenticate its value. This is mostly done by interlocking the location with profitable nodes of culture, nature, consumption and [built] physical milieu, signifying affluent old as well as the ‘hip’ new segments of a gentrified inner city. While the inner city schools use their location in various ways as part of their branding, pupils use it as an act of naming, stating both the privilege of being an inner city student and the connection to youth culture. However, there seems to be a difference in how pupils assess the school and the role of the inner city based on their familiarity with urban schooling. Pupils with greater knowledge of the inner city seem to acknowledge more firmly the different lifestyles viable in the various schools, referring to the pupils living close by that might attend and the characteristics of the specific location. On the other hand, pupils with lesser knowledge more often refer to the holistic sense of the inner city and the profits of “new and edgy” side of consumption possibilities while declaring their choice of school. Similarly, older schools with higher symbolic capital differ in how they use space and place from the newer ‘free-schools’ in that they focus more on their historical ancient and long presence in the city while newer schools act to profit more on what the location has to offer. Thus, the inner city gain an advantage in consecrating certain values, however differently deployed and acted upon by different social agents hierarchically.

References

Bergström, F., Sandström, F. M. (2001). Konkurrens mellan skolor – för barnens skull! Ekonomisk debatt. Årg 29, Nr. 5:319-331. Blomqvist, P., Rothstein, B. (2008). Välfärdsstatens nya ansikte. Stockholm: Agora. Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction. A social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Oxon: The President and Fellows of Harvard College and Routledge. Bourdieu, P. (1985). The Social Space and the Genesis of Groups. Theory and Society. Vol. 14, No. 6:723-744. Bourdieu, P. (1989). Social Space and Symbolic Power. Sociological Theory. Vol. 7, No. 1:14-25. Bourdieu, P. (1991). Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge: Polity Press. Bourdieu, P. (1996). The state nobility. Cambridge: Polity Press. Bourdieu, P. (1999). SITE EFFECTS. In: Bourdieu et al.. The weight of the world. Cambridge: Polity Press. Broady, D., Börjesson, M. (2006). En social karta över gymnasieskolan. Ord och Bild [Tema – Skolan]. No. 3-4:90-99. Dubet, F. (2010). The sociology for pupils. Journal of Education Policy. Vol. 15, No. 1:93-104. Fairclough, N. (2000). Discourse, social theory, and social research: The discourse of welfare reform. Journal of Sociolinguistics. Vol. 4, No. 2:163-195. Fairclough, N. (2010). Critical Discourse Analysis. The Critical Study of Language. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited. Hultqvist, E. (2010). Diversité des jeux de frontières. Une perspective comparative. Romanie, Suède, Brésil: Modulation des frontières dans un de compétition et de libre choix. La Suède. I: Saint- Martin, A. och Dinu Gheorghiu, M. (Eds.). Éducation et frontières sociales. Un grand Bricolage. Paris: Michalon. Larsson, E (2014). Skolan, innerstaden och den rumsliga symboliken. En studie om rummets inverkan på ungdomars val av gymnasieskolor i Stockholms innerstad. Master thesis. Stockholm: Stockholm University: author. National Agency of Education (2011). Skolmarknadens geografi. Om gymnasieelevers pendling på lokala och regionala skolmarknader. Stockholm: National Agency of Education. Palme, M. (2008). Det kulturella kapitalet. Studier av symboliska tillgångar i det svenska utbildningssystemet 1988-2008. Uppsala: Mikael Palme and ACTA UNIVERSITATIS UPSALIENSIS. Suttles, G. D. (1984). The Cumulative Texture of Local Urban Culture. American Journal of Sociology. Vol. 90. No. 2:283-304. Wacquant, L. (2015). Crafting the neoliberal State. Workfare and prisonfare in the bureaucratic field. In: Hilgers, M. and Mangez, E. (Eds.). Bourdieu´s Theory of Social Fields. Concepts and applications. Oxon: Rotledge.

Author Information

Elisabeth Hultqvist (presenting / submitting)

Stockholm University

Science of Education

Stockholm

Eric Larsson (presenting)

Stockholm university

Department of Education

Upplands Vasby

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