In recent decades there has been a rapid increase in immigration to Western European countries and this, in Sweden, together with changes in the systemic characteristics of schooling through the increased use of choice-driven education systems has added new dimensions to debates about educational opportunities and inequalities. Questions that have been posed include whether the mechanisms of stratification that previously applied regarding ‘national’ socio-economic fractions also work for children of new-migrant backgrounds and how the educational choices of these children might work so as to either increase or decrease their disadvantage relative to the majority population. These questions concern one of the major challenges facing Sweden’s schools today, which is to offer all its students an equal education. Research has demonstrated clear relationships between growing up in disadvantaged neighborhoods and educational attainment but as yet less progress has been made in identifying the mechanisms by which such neighborhood effects come about and their mechanisms are not well understood. These issues are discussed in the presentation based on meta-ethnographic research.