Community work or neighbourhood revitalization: a study of the cooperation between school, social services, and housing companies

ABSTRACT

In several European cities, the residential areas built during the record years of the 1960s and 70s are now associated with decline, unemployment, and social unrest. To remedy this situation, schools, social services, and housing companies are collaborating with initiatives aimed at children and youth in these areas. The purpose of this study is to describe the conditions for the social efforts being made. The study is based on 17 semi-structured interviews with employees in schools, social services, and housing companies. The results show how the initiatives that are implemented become conditioned by the housing companies’ financial interests.

KEYWORDS:

• Education
• social services
• housing companies
• neighbourhood revitalization
• youth

Introduction

This article originates from a research project studying public activities in areas characterized by low socioeconomic status, where criminals have an impact on the local community. The focus of this article is on how public activities intend to improve the conditions for young people in such areas. In several European cities, the residential areas that were built during the record years of the 1960s and 70s are now associated with decline, unemployment, and social unrest (Dikeç 2017; Hancock and Mooney 2013; Sernhede 2018). In Denmark and Sweden, the names of neighbourhoods such as Aalborg Øst, Vollsmose, Rosengård, and Husby are linked to stigmatized labels such as ‘parallel societies’ and ‘ghettos’.

Loic Wacquant (2020) has described the situation in urban areas in the United States as the state and welfare society having departed these areas, leaving residents on their own, due to recurring economic crises and neoliberal politics. In a Nordic context, however, the state and municipalities have played a dual role (Birk and Arp Fallov 2020; Frandsen and Hansen 2020; Larsen and Delica 2019). In parallel with cuts in the public sector, several official reports have been published that point to the various challenges inherent in meeting the current needs of the public sector and different social initiatives have been implemented to break this negative development (Stenius and Storbjork 2020; Vitus 2017). It is therefore important to understand how similar neoliberal principles in the governance of several post-industrial countries are acted out differently in a national context (cf. Chandler et al. 2015; Larsen and Delica 2019). This study mainly focuses on the context of Nordic welfare societies.

The Swedish Police Authority has published an annual report since 2015 on Swedish districts defined as ‘risk areas’, ‘vulnerable areas’, and ‘particularly vulnerable areas’, which has some similarities to the so-called ‘ghetto list’ in Denmark. This list marks neighbourhoods where criminality is interpreted as having an impact on the local community in a way that affects the inhabitants in their everyday lives (Noa 2021, 7). These areas have several common characteristics, including a high rate of poverty and unemployment, students graduating from primary school without achieving high enough grades for further studies, and overcrowded housing. However, the criteria that are used to include such areas on the list are based on how the police measure their ability to conduct policing in the area. Socioeconomic factors are mentioned as part of the context but are not a criterion, and there are several areas with similar socioeconomic conditions in Sweden that do not appear on the police list.

The National Police Authority’s list of vulnerable neighbourhoods has had a major impact in Sweden on both a national and local level and has led to several social interventions to change the situation in these neighbourhoods (Dikeç 2017; Herz 2016; Sernhede 2018). In Gothenburg, where this study is carried out, the city council has adopted the goal of no longer having any areas in the city categorized by the police as particularly vulnerable, vulnerable, or a risk area by 2025. At present, there are five areas in Gothenburg defined as particularly vulnerable, one area categorized as vulnerable, and two areas categorized as risk areas. In the work of reversing the negative development in these neighbourhoods, the city council’s budget document gives the public housing group the express mission of working towards removing these neighbourhoods from the list before the end of 2025, stating: ‘Gothenburg will not have any particularly vulnerable areas in 2025.//The city council shall assist the public housing group … to encourage collaboration between different actors to make designated places more attractive …’ (Göteborgs stad budget 2021-11–11 §4, p. 28). The public housing group has set aside SEK 11 billion for this assignment. However, it is not clear how much of this money is intended for new construction and renovations and how much is earmarked for social projects. At present, the public housing group co-finances staff who work with social projects at 10 schools, at a cost of approximately SEK 1 million per year.

The situation for children and young people is a particularly prioritized issue, and it has become common for housing companies to cooperate with social services and schools and to provide support for students doing their homework, leisure activities, and work for youth during the summer holidays for those whose guardians are tenants. Taking this situation as a starting point, this study focuses on collaborations among employees at housing companies, social services, and schools, and their aims to support children and youth in vulnerable areas. The intention is to investigate: 1) how the support is organized; 2) what room for manoeuvring is described by the employees of the housing companies, social services, and schools; and 3) whether there are any conflicts of interest. The empirical material consists of interviews with employees of housing companies, employees of social services, and educators.

Youth in vulnerable areas

The growing concern for children and young people in vulnerable neighbourhoods must be viewed in relation to how increasing housing segregation in Sweden has contributed to students with similar backgrounds being concentrated at the same schools (Bunar 2011; Dahlstedt and Lozic 2018; Gustafsson, Katz, and Österberg 2017). The differences in school performance that previously existed between students within the same classroom are now instead differences between different schools (Gustafsson and Yang Hansen 2018). As a result, there are schools in the districts that have been categorized as vulnerable at which 50–70% of the pupils leave compulsory school without eligibility for upper secondary school. The consequences of this situation are clear. Surveys show that 35–40% of young people between the ages of 20 and 25 in districts categorized as vulnerable are neither at work nor studying (Sernhede 2018).

In areas where a large proportion of residents are in need of financial support, the costs of meeting the residents’ needs result in reduced scope for working with social mobilization and general support for children and young people (Dahlstedt and Lozic 2018; Herz 2016). The concentrations of unemployed young people and those with incomplete grades from compulsory school have contributed to an increased fear that these children will become involved in criminality (Noa 2021). Several of the city’s measurements have therefore shifted to focus more on reducing criminality than on social support – a development that can be compared with those in other European countries (Dikeç 2017; Sernhede 2018; Wacquant 2020). To understand the rise of this situation, it is important to consider how the conditions in the housing market have changed during the 2000s.

The Swedish “million program”: a brief introduction

In Sweden, as in other industrial European countries, there was an apartment shortage in metropolitan areas after the second World War. To address this challenge, the Swedish government decided to build one million apartments between 1965 and 1975 (Dikeç 2017; Sernhede 2018). In Gothenburg, most of these apartments were built in the outskirts of the city, as satellite cities surrounded by forest and lakes but with no natural connection to the rest of Gothenburg. The imagined residents that would move into these areas were workers in the still-expanding industries before the oil crisis in 1973.

However, the relatively high wages during the 1970s and 80s led many of the intended tenants to buy detached houses in other areas instead. Thus, in the mid-1970s, most of these apartments remained unrented. As a result, these areas became a place for incoming residents to the city and for those who had difficulty finding other accommodations. Over the subsequent decades, the ‘million program’ areas became the first residential stop for many immigrants and refugees (Grander 2020). Notably, few places in Sweden have been described in the media as frequently and with such negative wording as these areas (Bunar 2011; Dahlstedt and Lozic 2018; Sernhede 2018).

Today, the rental apartments built during the ‘million program’ years – especially those owned by municipality-run housing companies – have become the most common housing for residents with a low income and precarious position in the labour market (Listerborn 2018). However, this has nothing to do with tenancies being a less expensive form of housing than condominiums or detached houses. In many cases, therefore, people living in a rental apartment pay a greater share of their income for housing than those who own their homes (Grander 2020).

Housing shortages and rising prices in the housing market have thus contributed to creating a threshold effect for the inhabitants of these areas, where stable income and savings, or capital invested in home ownership, have become a requirement for being able to own a home (Listerborn 2018). Several of the ‘million program’ areas have become social housing areas in practice, with special tenancies for low-income residents with a foreign background (Grander 2020). However, unlike countries that provide forms of housing such as Almene Boliger in Denmark and Sozialer Wohnungsbau in Germany, there is no statutory state or municipal responsibility in Sweden to provide housing for low-income residents (Boverket 2017).

Since 2011, the management of municipal housing companies has been required to be based on market principles and economic profits, due to laws in the European Union. Thus, these companies are obliged to both take on societal responsibility and be governed as profit-run companies (Grander 2020). In the past, housing companies’ social responsibility primarily involved providing new homes. In recent years, however, it has become more common for both public and private housing companies to describe their operations using concepts such as ‘social services’ and ‘social sustainable development’. Research shows that both municipal and private housing companies finance and organize social initiatives in schools and for children’s and youths’ leisure time, such as homework support and sports activities on school premises (Dahlstedt and Lozic 2018). Studies from Canada and England show a similar situation, with schools and social authorities increasingly cooperating with private and non-profit organizations (Woolford and Curran 2013; Youdell and McGimpsey 2015). In Sweden, this situation is relatively new, and there are few studies on place-based politics and practices at a street level in the so-called vulnerable areas (Dahlstedt and Lozic 2018; Larsen and Delica 2019). This study therefore contributes to knowledge about how the conditions for community work, education, and social work supporting children and youth change as actors from other sectors gain influence in areas that were previously governed by the municipality.

Setting and methodology

This study focuses on how the employees of housing companies, social services, and schools aim to support the children and youth living in vulnerable areas. From a theoretical perspective, this aim can be viewed as a desire to understand how a situation in society becomes a social problem and an object of governmental efforts through the process of using symbolic power to address the identified issues. In this case, the Swedish Police Authority has labelled neighbourhoods as ‘risk areas’, ‘vulnerable areas’, and ‘particularly vulnerable areas’, which has a strong influence on how the situations in these areas will be viewed (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992; Wacquant 2020). From a Nordic perspective, this study is also about how placed-based politics and practices shape and define the challenges in neighbourhoods listed as vulnerable areas by the police and the needs of the youth in these areas (cf. Dahlstedt and Lozic 2018; Larsen and Delica 2019).

In retrospect, the deregulation of public authorities and a place-based politics has mainly come to be associated with neoliberal ideas – is, with liberalism’s basic ideas of a small state, individualism, and strong protection of property rights, where the ‘neo’ in ‘neoliberal’ appears to be a demand for the public sector to be efficient and follow market-like principles (Wacquant 2020). However, it should be noted that ideas of the decentralization and deregulation of the public sector have come from both the political right and the political left, which have promoted such ideas in the name of economic efficiency and the revitalization of democracy, as a way of giving residents more influence in the form of greater freedom of choice in social services (Donzelot and Gordon 2009).

Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992) have argued that state governance and the public sector should not be viewed as a unified unit, but rather as comprising conflicting interests. Thus, which situations are defined as social problems and which measures gain legitimacy as a way of dealing with these problems may differ in different areas of the public sector. The public sector can be viewed as a network of positions occupied by employees, where the legitimacy and room for manoeuvring these positions possess depend on how symbolic and material resources are distributed and can result in conflicts of interest. The present case involves the ways in which resources are disbursed by the City of Gothenburg and by public and private housing companies in the work of supporting children and youth and handling the problems associated with the vulnerable areas.

The empirical material in this study consists of 17 semi-structured interviews with employees at private and public housing companies, employees of social services, and school principals at compulsory schools in an administrative district in the city. which consists of eight neighbourhoods. In this text named as ‘the southern district’. Five of these neighbourhoods have been classified by the police as particularly vulnerable areas. The interviewed individuals hold key positions in the daily and operational work of the municipality’s goal of having no areas in Gothenburg be on the police list of vulnerable areas by 2025.

The study participants include four employees working at public housing companies and one employee from a private housing company, all of whom hold responsibility for the housing companies’ social work in the southern district. The names of the services vary slightly between different housing companies, and include district manager, security manager, and so forth. These employees are united by their responsibility for issues concerning housing and for their task of carrying out various activities for the tenants in the company’s properties. In addition, eight employees of social services were interviewed in this study. These employees hold positions such as safety manager and process leader, and have the assignment of working with preventive and social measures aimed at children and young people in the southern district. In addition, four school principals at compulsory schools in the southern district were interviewed. Schools were selected that are part of the city’s investment in community schools – that is, the selected schools collaborate with associations and organizations such as housing companies to offer students various activities and support, both before and after school (cf. Green and Gooden 2014).

All interviews were conducted at the employees’ workplaces. The interviews lasted for about an hour and were audio-recorded and then printed. Typical speech expressions such as humming were omitted or corrected to strengthen the readability of the transcribed text. The interviews put special focus on the collaboration between the employees at schools, housing companies, and social services. For example, the interviewees were asked questions about various initiatives, about their understanding of the organization and conditions for collaboration, and whether they had noticed any difficulties. The interviews were then analysed by searching for similarities and differences in the answers to the above-mentioned questions (Silverman 2020). During the analysis, the focus was on how the employees described areas of responsibility, their tasks, their manoeuvring, their scope for action, and any conflicts of interest. Of course, it would have been possible to analyse the material from the interviews with a focus on other analytical themes, such as how the employees viewed the needs of students and residents. However, the analysis in this article is limited to the questions described above.

The interviews are considered to be ‘events in talk’; for example, situations in which certain aspects of an occasion may be emphasized during the process of organizing experience and creating an understanding of a situation (Silverman 2020). Taking this perspective as a starting point, the practices of organizations such as schools, social services, and housing companies involve using and producing knowledge, categories, routines, and interpretations that become established over time in the form of professional narratives about the organizations’ work. Narratives can thus be best understood as a mixture of concepts from overall goals, laws, and regulations to everyday expressions and categories that are frequently repeated in communication with colleagues. Depending on how different narratives have been established, some measures and perspectives become viewed as credible and sensible, while other interventions appear less appropriate (Jenkins 2000).

The interpretation of the interviews thus becomes a way of linking the local and context-bound perspective within the housing companies, social services, and schools with the political goals, reports, and investigations that are formulated regionally and nationally (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992). This analytical approach means that questions about credibility and limitations should be discussed based on whether the analysis contributes knowledge in relation to similar issues examined in this study, rather than the possibility of repeating implementation and results (Silverman 2020). This study was conducted on the basis of the Swedish Research Council’s ethical guidelines regarding information, consent, voluntariness, and confidentiality (Swedish Research Council 2017).

Results

In this section, the results are presented under three headings: organizational gaps, legitimacy and room for manoeuvring, and conflicts of interest and contradictions. The study’s conclusions are then presented and discussed in the subsequent section.

Organizational gaps

The assignment given by the city to the municipal housing companies of the community development entails an organizational overlap with the social services’ and the schools’ assignments and obligations. This has resulted in a number of hybrid social pedagogical interventions, in which finances, legal responsibility, and assignments are shared between several different types of organization. One of the school principals described how the responsibility to give the students breakfast in the morning before teaching starts has become part of the school’s assignments:

We do not have sufficient resources … while housing companies have. I had a meeting with the new district manager at the public housing company. We talked a lot about what they can do. Maybe take responsibility for serving breakfast to the students here … I will have a meeting with the private housing company as well, and maybe try to get them to pay for, say, 15 hours a week, for someone that will come and serve breakfast here. We have the facilities. However, we can’t do that. We do not have the finances to do that. I can’t take from the budget that is for the students’ special support …

(Principal of a compulsory school in the southern district)

Given the school’s resources, it is not possible to organize the budget to give the students breakfast without entailing cuts in other areas. Therefore, the plan is for the employees from public and private housing companies to be on the school premises for a few hours every morning to serve breakfast. However, the issue of students’ opportunity to have breakfast at school needs to be put into perspective. It is far from clear that it is the school’s responsibility to ensure that students do not come hungry to school. When guardians are unable to provide the necessary care for a child for various reasons – in this case, for letting the child go hungry to school – it can be a reason for a report to social services. However, when the problem reaches such a scope and affects so many people that it can no longer be viewed as an individual matter but becomes a general concern, then it becomes a responsibility for the school principal. As the school lacks the resources to handle this situation, it must seek support from other organizations. Due to the extent of the needs that have been revealed during interventions in these areas, the housing companies have become involved in a number of different issues. In the example below, the security manager in charge of a group of housing workers describes their duties:

I have the responsibility for a group of workers who are out on the streets, present in the area. I work Monday to Sunday. Whether it’s a holiday or not. The main assignment is to establish a connection with the community, to be a trustworthy adult. Furthermore, to make sure that the exterior doors in the entrance gates are closed. Making sure it doesn’t get too messy, so picking up rubbish, checking incorrectly parked cars. Making sure that everything looks good on the surface.

(Security manager, public housing company)

The housing companies’ social assignments give them opportunities to work with a number of different issues in the districts. The housing security workers are onsite 7 days a week, from morning to evening, every day of the year. Their work includes everything from building relationships and keeping an eye on how the youth behave to checking incorrectly parked cars and picking up rubbish. Their role falls somewhere between acting as a social worker and being a security guard. In the following example, an employee at a public housing company describes how they arrange work for young people in the area during the summer and other holidays:

We plan to arrange summer jobs for youth whose families rent from us. We have close contact with the disturbance emergency service, so we check that it isn’t youth from apartments with reported disturbances. We want it to be those from families with proper behavior who receive the opportunity.

(Process manager, public housing company)

The housing companies take the lead to define the framework for the initiatives being implemented. During the interviews, the employees of the housing companies describe how they interact with the schools and associations regarding education, leisure time, and health issues. Financial support from housing companies for local sports associations or homework activities is far from new. However, the support the housing companies provide to the children and youth living in the area is not general; rather, it is conditional on whether or not disturbances have been reported in a family’s apartment. The support the housing companies provide to allow youth to gain work experience is different from the services the tenants of the companies are entitled to, based on their rental agreement, and also differs from the general support the city provides for youth through employment services. In the interviews, the employees of the housing companies describe how they take initiative to plan and implement activities to address issues that are very different from the assignments housing companies have traditionally been involved in. In the example below, the district manager for the housing workers at one of the private housing companies describes the work the housing company carries out in a neighbourhood school:

We have a project. We call it the psychosocial project. This is because the teachers at school have experienced problems with some students, or rather with many of them, saying various bad and inappropriate things to each other. There are fights during the breaks in school. It has become a bad trend. We are working to change this situation. We are the ones who initiated the action to handle this.

(District manager, private housing company)

The opportunity that the housing companies have in this situation – that is, to take the initiative and become involved in various actions – must be understood on the basis that the employees at the housing companies are not regulated by laws and obligations, unlike the professionals in schools and social services. In their so-called ‘psychosocial project’, the employee at the private housing company works to counteract violence and degrading treatment. In many ways, this effort overlaps with and can be viewed as a parallel system in relation to the school’s legal responsibility to act preventively against degrading treatment and harassment. According to the Swedish Education Act, the school principal and the school’s health team are obligated to take action in such matters. However, unlike the housing company’s similar efforts, efforts made by the school’s health team must involve employees with medical, psychological, psychosocial, and special-needs education to participate in the work, according to the Education Act. These examples reveal how the city’s goal creates organizational gaps within which housing companies are given the opportunity to implement initiatives within the social services’ and schools’ area of responsibility, on different terms.

Legitimacy and room for maneuvering

The central role that the housing companies have been given in issues that have previously been regarded as part of the housing companies’ social responsibility should be understood in relation to how the employees at the housing companies, social services, and schools describe their options for action. All of the interviewed employees repeatedly emphasized the importance of financial resources. In the following example, an employee of social services describes the necessity for collaboration that comes from a lack of resources within their own organization:

We cannot do this on our own. We need to mobilize and, by working in collaboration in the school, open up the school to other associations and organizations. Such community work is necessary, and we need to mobilize right now. We are not delivering the welfare we should. Now, we are trying to fix things we should not need to fix … bad decisions, for example. It’s so bad that we’re trying to find solutions right now. Something new that can replace a broken welfare system that doesn’t work anymore.

(Process leader, social services)

In this example, cooperation between the public sector and various actors in civil society and the private sector is presented as a necessity, as the public sector is unable to meet the needs of the inhabitants. In this situation, opening up the school to various actors who contribute with breakfast, help with homework, and leisure activities before and after school is a way of obtaining necessary resources. The lack of resources in the public sector generates frustration – not only among workers in the social services and school, but also among the employees in the housing companies, who are losing trust in the social authorities. In the following example, an employee at a public housing company describes how they have more room for manoeuvring compared with the city’s employees.

The housing companies have quite a lot of power compared with what the city has. Companies have a lot of muscle, in terms of money and power. This makes it easier to work. We have the muscles. The city needs to make cuts. They are going to close the leisure centers; it’s one thing after another. This is the advantage of having such large muscles in the housing companies. We, as housing companies, can be involved and support the development. We do a lot of that. It is an important investment. However, the city needs more muscle, so they can implement some of these ventures that are needed.

(Security manager, public housing company)

In this example, the interviewee compares the public housing companies’ opportunities to implement various initiatives in the district with the opportunities that the various municipal sectors have to carry out their assignments. During the interviews, employees at both municipal and private housing companies expressed frustration that the other sectors in the city could not match the housing companies’ efforts. This frustration is elaborated in the following example, in which an employee of a municipal housing company compares the investments that the housing companies are prepared to make with the investments made by social services and schools.

If I hire four staff to be at school in the evenings: Can the city match that investment? In that case, we have eight employees. That would be great. The alternative is that the city says they can’t do it. ‘We can’t match it’. In that case, I have to take over their entire responsibility. I’m ready to do that. However, I prefer to see us do this together. I see it as necessary. We cannot have after-school activities without the resources for such activities.

(District manager, public housing company)

The division between the city and the municipal housing companies is interesting, as these housing companies are part of the city’s administration, just like the other sectors within the municipal administration. Housing issues, education, and social services are governed by the politicians who were voted in by city’s inhabitants in the local elections. The line that the employees of the municipal housing companies draw between themselves and the other employees of the city shows how the economic distribution of resources affects how the employees define their assignments. The housing companies’ assignments are regulated based on both social responsibility and the demands of profit, in contrast to the social services and schools, which are expected to offer the residents as high a level of welfare as their respective budgets allow. The restricted budgets of the schools and social services in certain sectors of the city can be explained by the fact that the costs of economic support rise in areas where a larger proportion of residents lack income – even as that same economic support serves as a guarantee for the public housing companies’ rental income. The interviewees discussed how the allocation of resources affects the opportunities the different sectors have for action. In the following example, an employees of social services raises this issue:

I know that there is an 11 billion [SEK] package for these areas at the public housing companies. It is the housing companies that have the financial muscle. Here, we have no muscles anymore, anywhere. It’s obvious. I’ve talked to the management, and they say that we cannot cause any additional costs now. Now that the housing company has started with housing workers, there has been talk that we have the opportunity to reduce the costs for the staff working within the community.

(Safety manager, social services)

Here, the social services employee describes how their room for manoeuvring has declined. When the social services are forced to prioritize, the housing companies’ investment in housing workers becomes one of the arguments used to reduce the number of services provided by social workers in the area. All in all, this example shows how the public housing companies have greater opportunities to decide what they finance, as the social service or the schools; for example, they have no legal obligations to ensure that students experiencing poorer conditions reach the objectives and can instead prioritize the assignments that are in their own best interests.

Conflicts of interest and contradictions

The central role played by housing companies in achieving the city’s goal of no longer having any vulnerable areas in the city by 2025 is emphasized by the city as a way to ensure stability and long-term interventions, since the municipal housing companies own the majority of the properties in these areas. However, there are many indications that the housing companies’ efforts are far from solving the problem of short-lived interventions. Both the municipal and the private housing companies have entered long-term agreements with non-profit organizations and associations for different kinds of support carried out in the schools. In the example below, the principal of a compulsory school describes how a lack of long-term perspective and predictability creates uncertainty.

The Rescue Mission and the City Mission are here. They support the students with their homework. I think there are six organizations that are here and each has a group of students … It is positive, that there are so many. However, it’s also … it’s not stable. They’re here now. Will they be here for the next five years? We don’t know. All of a sudden, there are … yes, there are always things that make it difficult. They get rid of their premises or lose their financial support ….

(Principal, compulsory school)

Collaboration with non-profit organizations is described, on the one hand, as an opportunity to obtain extra resources and, on the other hand, as a breeding ground for uncertainty. In the example above, the principal describes how six different non-profit organizations are offering students support with their homework. Although the support that is provided is seen in as a positive thing, it is uncertain how long the school can rely on receiving this support. However, even though the terms of the mandate the city has given to the housing companies do not primarily refer to short-term projects, there is insecurity regarding how long these interventions will continue. In the following example, an employee at one of the public housing companies explains an investment that the housing company financed at a school in the southern district.

We made an investment in the area; we funded the cost for a position at one of the schools. The school invoiced the salary to us. But it did not go well. The staff was an extra resource, and the school were overjoyed. However, there was an idea behind why we did this investment. The principal’s idea was that this person should work with students’ attendance and health, but we canceled that support. I think about it like this: The school should have invested in a music class. Grades four to nine … adding a profile class to this school to get another kind of family to apply. When established parents get involved, they also have demands. I think this is needed.

(District manager, public housing company)

This example reveals a conflict between the different interests of the school and the housing company. The housing company financed a staff member to work at the school. This opportunity was warmly welcomed by the school, which chose to use it to employ a staff member to work with the students’ health and attendance. However, the housing company withdrew its support from the school – not because the school principal said the support was no longer needed, but because the housing company’s employee wanted the school to use the resources differently, to start a ‘profile class’ (i.e. a music class). The employee emphasized that a profile class in music would encourage resourceful families to choose to enrol their children in this school which would presumably bring more affluent families into the neighbourhood. Thus, the housing companies’ positions raise questions on where the boundaries lie between obligations and responsibilities for the different organizations and sectors. In the following example, a school principal discusses this issue:

I attended a meeting with the local development group, with housing companies, and various sectors in the municipality. It was a shocking experience the first time. I was wondering, what is this? They described all the things they should do at the school where I am the principal. They described arranging homework support several days a week. It was a total shock at my first meeting. I believe in a school without homework. However, no one asked me what I thought. I know that none of my students have the opportunity to do homework at home. It is also not the case that everyone who needs help comes to the homework support [activities]. Teaching is the school’s responsibility, and support to the students must be offered within school. If it is to be homework and homework help, then it is the school’s responsibility, and it must be scheduled. If we want support from outside, we can bring in support on those occasions. But it can’t be on their terms.

(Principal, compulsory school)

Tensions and contradictions arise when boundaries between the different areas of responsibility of different organizers are shifted and exceeded in the work of interventions in vulnerable areas. In the example above, a school principal attended a meeting at which various proposals were presented regarding how associations and organizations could support children and young people in the community. One of the proposals was to offer homework support at school in the afternoons for students in the district. The principal describes her surprise that no one had asked her before planning how this would be done. In fact, the initiative conflicted with the school’s decision to avoid giving the students any homework. This decision was based on the view that it is the school’s responsibility to provide the support students need to reach their objectives. According to this argument, giving students homework would shift the responsibility for the students’ learning to their guardians and, since not all students have equal opportunities to receive support at home, would increase the gap between students’ different conditions. Taken together, these examples show how conflicts of interest and disagreements arise over who has the right to decide on issues that the housing companies have an interest in, but that are legally within the social services’ and the school’s area of responsibility.

Conclusions and discussion

In Gothenburg, the metropolitan municipality where this study was conducted, the municipal council has adopted the goal of ensuring that there will no longer be any neighbourhoods in the city categorized by the police as vulnerable by 2025. The city’s interventions particularly prioritize the situation of children and young people in these neighbourhoods. Taking the city’s goal as a starting point, this study focused on how employees in housing companies and social services describe how the support is organized, what room for manoeuvring is created, and whether there are any conflicts of interest.

The results show how the city’s objectives in the budget lead to hybrid forms of social initiatives in which housing companies are given greater room for manoeuvring, as these initiatives are not regulated by the Social Services Act or the Schools Act. Furthermore, the housing companies’ strong finances and ability to choose which social initiatives they finance contribute to the housing companies’ greater room for action. In other words, the legitimacy that the city council has given the housing companies allows these companies to act based on other rules and use other resources than what are possible and available for the social services and schools.

These findings display the conflicts of interest and differences of opinion that arise regarding whether the employees of housing companies or social workers and educators have the right to decide on various issues in school and on other efforts made to assist young people. Previous research has highlighted how such conflicts can be understood as challenges that occur when professional boundaries, objectives, and areas of responsibility shift (Birk and Arp Fallov 2020; Maron 2021; Woolford and Curran 2013).

In Sweden, the police publications about vulnerable areas have had great political and media impact, which has contributed to causing issues that were previously social policy to become part of local crime-prevention work, where housing companies have a strong influence on safety issues. A similar development can be seen in Denmark, where the debate on parallel societies has caused what were previously social issues in the welfare society to become local issues of security and crime (Frandsen and Hansen 2020; Larsen and Delica 2019)

Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992) have described the dual role of the public sector in society using the image of a right and a left hand. The metaphorical ‘right hand’ of the public sector focuses on economic interests, while the ‘left hand’ deals with social support and education. The advancing positions of the housing companies display how the boundary obligations and areas of responsibility of different organizations and sectors create tension regarding whether it is the economic interest of the right hand or the social responsibility of the left hand that should guide the intervention process (Birk and Arp Fallov 2020; Dahlstedt and Lozic 2018). In the current case, on the one hand, the City of Gothenburg has clearly stated objectives in its budget; on the other hand, the city leaves these objectives to be implemented by public, non-profit, and private organizations, and thus presents a typical case of neoliberal governance in many ways (Wacquant 2020). It should be noted that financial interests are not necessarily given the lead in all matters; rather, the focus is dependent on how the different power relations take form in networks and partnerships (Donzelot and Gordon 2009). However, the data shows that housing companies often hold the stronger hand in these partnerships and networks that have been established, due to their greater opportunities in terms of finances and in choosing what to finance.

The legitimacy that the city has given the housing companies creates the risk of establishing politically sanctioned parallel societies for a special category of residents; it also contributes to the territorial stigmatization of this areas (Birk and Arp Fallov 2020; Dikeç 2017; Frandsen and Hansen 2020). In contrast to children’s and young people’s rights in relation to social authorities and schools, children and youth have no other rights in relation to housing companies besides those regulated by their guardians’ rental agreements. In other words, the rights all children have to equal education and safe, meaningful leisure time should not be confused with the opportunities they are given to participate in homework support activities and leisure activities arranged by housing companies.

On the contrary, this study shows how the support from housing companies in Gothenburg is far from general or needs-adapted; rather, it is often selective and conditional in the areas police define as vulnerable or risk areas, and is based on what such support can contribute to that area’s attractiveness to more affluent residents. Therefore, it is questionable whether the measures being implemented can change the economic and social conditions that ultimately cause such areas to exist. From this perspective, segregation is a relational phenomenon that needs to be understood based on how poor and rich residents are distributed among different areas in the city (Sernhede 2018; cf.; Dikeç 2017). The City of Gothenburg’s efforts to change the situation in these areas can be understood as a political goal to make life more bearable for the children and youth in these districts; however, more research is needed to draw conclusions about the results of such action over time.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Stena forskningsfond .