This study focuses on comprehensive schools that are located in Finnish post-war high-rise suburban housing estates, known in Finland as lähiö. Since the 1990s, many lähiös have become socio-economically disadvantaged neighbourhoods, where ethnic minorities have also begun to cluster. Finnish lähiös are often seen in a negative light in the public debate and in the eyes of outsiders even though residents do often not share this view. However, little research has so far been done in Finland on neighbourhood stigma, especially in the everyday school lives of pupils.

In this ethnographic study, we examine the everyday reactions of pupils from socio-economically different neighbourhoods to lähiö stigmatization. Pupils lived both inside and outside the stigmatized lähiös, but attended the same lähiö schools. We focus on the spatial and social hierarchies and inequalities that responding to lähiö stigma creates among pupils in schools. In this study, we ask:

1) How is lähiö stigma reflected in the everyday lives of pupils from different backgrounds and neighbourhoods, and how do they react to lähiö stigma at schools?
2) What kind of spatial and social hierarchies and inequalities are created among pupils as they react to lähiö stigma?

Theoretically, we draw on Wacquant’s (2007, 2008) concept of territorial stigmatization and Pryor and Reeder’s (2011) taxonomy of four types of stigma: public stigma, self-stigma, stigma by association and structural stigma (see also Bos et al. 2013). We are not only interested in how pupils from different backgrounds internalize stigma and what it entails, as Wacquant's stigmatization framework (2007; 2008) would suggest, but also in how they are able to resist and challenge it (e.g. Kirkness 2014; Palmer et al. 2004) at the level of different types of stigma.

Studies on territorial stigma have often focused either on the perceptions of residents of stigmatized neighborhoods or housing (e.g. Kirkness 2014; McKenzie 2012; Palmer et al. 2004), including young people (e.g. Sernhede 2011; Visser, Bolt and Kempen 2015), or on how residents from middle-class backgrounds seek to disengage from notorious neighborhoods (e.g. Pinkster, 2014; Watt 2009). However, the role of the school in territorial stigmatization and the perspectives of pupils from different backgrounds have received less attention.

The novelty of our research for European research on urban education and educational inequalities among young people is that 1) we analyse and compare the perspectives of pupils from different socio-economic backgrounds who live both inside and outside stigmatized lähiös, 2) we have a research design in which the structural factor that connects pupils is school and 3) we examine territorial stigmatization as a mechanism of inequality in pupils' school life.

The ethnographic data of this study was produced as part of a research project Local Educational Ethos, examining educational inequalities and the response of schools to the challenges of urban segregation. In this study, we use interview and observation data from two case schools that are comprehensive schools located in the metropolitan area of Helsinki. The schools were selected for the research project based on their neighborhoods’ socio-economic context and location in statistically disadvantaged areas – in low SES and ethnically diverse neighborhoods compared to the city average. The majority of the pupils lived close to the schools, in low SES and ethnically diverse high-rise suburban housing estates. However, the schools also had pupils from surrounding relatively higher SES areas of mostly detached and terraced housing. Our ethnographic data comprise pupils’ (aged 13–15) interviews (n=46) and daily observations (88 school days) from two lähiö schools. The ethnographic fieldwork was conducted in both schools during the 2019–2020 school year. We observed everyday school life during lessons, breaks, events, excursions and other school activities. The interviews were semi-structured and conducted either individually or in small groups of two or three. The questions in the interviews centered around the school (What is this school like?) and neighborhood (What is it like to live in your neighborhood?). Parental consent was required from the guardians of the pupils who participated in the study, and all ethical procedures were conducted accordingly. We analysed the data using thematic content analysis (e.g., Braun and Clarke 2019). In the first stage of the analysis, we discussed what themes concerned territorial stigma and inequalities among pupils and their reactions to it. We then coded the interview and observation data from the two schools with Atlas.ti software. First, we coded the data with two codes: neighborhood and neighborhood comparison. Finally, we coded these sections with even more specific codes: public stigma, self-stigma, stigma by association, structural stigma, spatial hierarchies, challenging stigma and internalizing stigma.

Our findings demonstrate that a public stigma of living in a disadvantaged lähiö, or being associated with it through school, affected pupils’ lives and they used several strategies to avoid, alleviate and challenge the lähiö stigma. However, pupils from socio-economically diverse neighbourhoods and circumstances had different opportunities to react to lähiö stigma, leading to inequalities between them. Among pupils living in disadvantaged lähiös, the stigma caused ambivalent and negative feelings and a sense of shame towards their living environment. This may indicate the internalization of the lähiö stigma into a self-stigma. Pupils living outside stigmatised lähiös feared that the stigmatisation of school neighbourhoods would also affect them. This phenomenon could be called stigma by association (Boss et al. 2013; Pryor & Reeder 2011). Among pupils from relatively higher SES neighbourhoods, lähiö stigma was associated with the stigma of social problems and poverty in the neighbourhood and they used stigmatising language towards the school neighbourhood. Thus, reactions to lähiö stigma created spatial and social hierarchies among pupils. This contributed to the divisions and boundaries among pupils living in socio-economically different neighborhoods but attending the same school. Territorial stigmatization is thus one of the mechanisms that feed inequalities among young people at school. It is therefore important to reflect on school from the perspective of structural stigma, meaning the role of the school as an institution in alleviating spatial and social hierarchies and the use of stigmatized language among pupils from socio-economically different neighborhoods. Thus, active efforts are needed from school staff to raise awareness of the spatial hierarchies and neighbourhood stigma in pupils’ lives, to promote the grouping and encounters of pupils from different backgrounds and to support respectful interaction among them.

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