The educational reforms that encompassed school choice, vouchers, and for-profit private schools in Sweden during the 1990s transformed the public comprehensive school system through a process of marketization. (Lundahl et al., 2013). An important outcome of school choice is how students are allocated between schools; however, there is still a significant knowledge gap on the effects of school choice mechanisms on student sorting across schools in different places (Wilson & Bridge, 2019). The contextualized nature of modes of educational provision and regulations is an important determinant in sorting processes, and giving attention to the arrangement of local school markets is critical in understanding the process of school segregation (Perry, Rowe & Lubienski, 2022). We focus on the most student-dense and differentiated school market in Sweden: the Stockholm region, where private educational provisions are geographically segmented between residential areas. Two important aspects of local policies in the region that influenced and changed student sorting across upper secondary schools are the removal of the proximity principle and restrictions in inter-municipality program choices—these have triggered new choice-based student mobilities. While there are indications that these administrative policies have prompted important changes in how students are sorted across schools, the question remains: how have these processes developed over time, and how are they related to differences in educational offerings and patterns of residential segregation within the region? The theoretical framework proposed by Perry, Rowe & Lubienski (2022) guides our analysis of how to understand the mechanisms and causes of school segregation. Our aim is to examine the relationship between school choice, school segregation, and residential segregation in the Stockholm school market between 1997 and 2017. The analyses utilize register data that contain information on all students attending an upper secondary school in the market during the chosen time. The data allow for a longitudinal exploration of an entire student population in a market setting, which offers important knowledge on both the spatial and temporal dimensions of school segregation. Preliminary results show that while residential segregation remains stable, there is a surge in school segregation, and the likelihood of attending a school with a higher concentration of foreign background students relative to the neighborhood composition increases over time for foreign students. Similarly, multi-level analysis indicates that residential segregation is less influential for school segregation compared to changes in market characteristics such as private schools, combinations of study programs, and the share of vocational students.

Lundahl, L., Arreman, I. E., Holm, A. S., & Lundström, U. (2013). Educational marketization the Swedish way. Education inquiry, 4(3), 22620. Perry, L. B., Rowe, E., & Lubienski, C. (2022). School segregation: theoretical insights and future directions. Comparative Education, 1-15. Wilson, D., & Bridge, G. (2019). School choice and the city: Geographies of allocation and segregation. Urban Studies, 56(15), 3198-3215