Even in Iceland? Exploring mothers’ narratives on neighbourhood choice in a perceived classless and feminist utopia

ABSTRACT

The study explores how mothers in Iceland, a relatively new nation state that is perceived as being gender equal, classless and homogeneous, adapt and respond to international trends of consumer cultures. Building on studies about parental neighbourhood choice, parental practices and reproduction of social class, the study’s aim is to examine the local manifestations of those in an international context. To reach this aim, nine interviews with middle-class mothers who live in either disadvantaged or privileged neighbourhoods in terms of income, education level and ethnicity were analysed. Our findings on middle-class anxiety over class reproduction being mediated by neighbourhood and school choice are in accord with international literature. Our findings depart from the literature in the way that social capital reproduction plays out in the most affluent neighbourhood and the importance the most affluent middle-class mothers put on geographical closeness to their extended families.

KEYWORDS:

• Mothering
• reproduction of class
• neighbourhoods
• qualitative method
• Iceland

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 With notable exceptions, see for example Ellenberger (2019).

2 Optimally, this paper would refer to Icelandic studies on urban class segregation, school choice and parental neighbourhood choice. However, no such studies exist. This study helps address this gap of knowledge.

3 The Reykjavik metropolitan area includes six municipalities: Reykjavik, Seltjarnarnes, Mosfellsbær, Kópavogur, Garðabær and Hafnarfjörður.

4 Icelanders are very active on social media; 92% of Icelanders over 18 years of age use Facebook (Gallup 2017).

5 A private school is a school that is run by the private or the voluntary sector and mostly, but not totally, with public funding. The schools receive 75% of the medium cost for each student, and most charge additional tuition.

6 The quintiles are calculated based on all families with school-aged children in the Reykjavik metropolitan area and Akureyri using the OECD modified equivalence scale. Statistics Iceland collected this data from annual tax reports.

7 The familial connection to Iceland is measured by using the country of birth of both parents and of grandparents. A person is considered to have a familial connection to Iceland if they are born in Iceland or if at least one of their parents is born in Iceland.

8 Information on the parents’ education level is derived from the census run by Statistics Iceland’.

9 Data from Statistics Iceland processed for this study.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Icelandic Centre for Research [grant number 184857-052].