Olav Nygård
Senior lecturer
https://liu.se/en/employee/olany64
Active projects
After Optimism
Despite achieving lower grades on average in lower-secondary school, children of immigrants have high aspirations and choose academic tracks in upper-secondary school at higher rates than their majority peers. Research on this ‘immigrant optimism’ has mainly explored its causes and assessed its impact on degree completion rates. This project adopts a wider life course perspective on this phenomenon and extends this literature in several ways. First, we go beyond degree completion by mapping out the broader educational and labour-market trajectories that these degree choices result in. Second, we advance the primarily quantitative work on the causes of this optimism by examining the socio-biographical forces and affective drives it depends upon. Third, we extend prior work on class and social mobility by studying the social psychological impact of the mobility patterns that this optimism results in. Methodologically, we use a sequential mixed-methods design combining longitudinal register data, survey data, and life history interviews. Theoretically, we innovate by
applying recent post-Bourdieusian theory to the empirical challenges of this field and aim to refine this theoretical work in the process. The study also has major societal relevance as it will increase our understanding of the social factors underlying the polarized educational outcomes among children of immigrants and generate key insights into how to maximize the benefits of optimism while minimizing its risks.
Improving Educational Outcomes
This project focuses on top-down politically initiated measures for increased equality and bottom-up local initiatives to strengthen the compensatory capacity of schools in marginalised areas of large cities and in rural areas. We aim to study and compare initiatives for improvement in schools with low academic achievement, examining how they are initiated and implemented and the extent to which they both contribute to students’ knowledge development and create conditions for more-equal life opportunities. At present, there is little systematic knowledge about the effects of the different types of initiative and how they are designed and adapted to the contexts that constitute large cities and rural areas. The project uses a mixed-method approach combining i) a survey with staff members at a selection of schools from across the country in large cities and rural areas; and ii) ethnographic methods by which we study three schools in marginalised metropolitan areas and three rural schools that have improved their results over the past five years. A key contribution is the project’s ability to show how financial, organisational, social and educational initiatives can work together to create favourable conditions for learning.
Negotiated Mobility and Belonging
An increasing share of Sweden’s foreign-born population is living in small towns and rural areas. Many of these immigrants are young, and many are recently arrived during the 2015 refugee reception that made rural areas into immigration destinations through dispersal policies. At the same time, there is also a general trend of rural emigration, particularly among young people who are drawn to the education and labour market opportunities of larger cities. Young people in rural areas, and immigrant youth in particular, are therefore confronted with conflicting norms and institutional opportunities and constraints to leave or stay, making their transitions to adulthood into negotiations of mobility and belonging. Against this background, the project will explore how spatial and social mobility intersect during transitions to adulthood among young adults in Swedish rural municipalities characterized by transnational immigration and internal out-migration. To do this, the project will combine a quantitative survey where young adults are asked about their mobility trajectories so far, and in-depth qualitative interviews and ethnographic observations. Through the project’s focus on a context where mobility and belonging is always contested, and by applying an innovative theoretical framework that combines mobilities and careership theory, the project will destabilize sedentariness as a norm and contribute to a deeper understanding of migration and integration processes.
The REMESO Database
Martin Klinthäll, Associate professor
The REMESO database is a register-based database that contains information about all individuals, schools, dwellings and companies in Sweden.
The REMESO database is based on Statistics Sweden’s annual registerdata and consists of five parts:
(1) A population register containing information about all individuals who were registered in Sweden as of 31 December for each year;
(2) Longitudinal Integration Database for Health Insurance and Labor Market Studies (LISA);
(3) A business register with information about all economically active companies and organizations in Sweden , whether they belong to the private or public sector;
(4) A school register with information about all elementary schools and upper secondary schools, including student grades;
(5) A real estate register containing microdata administrative and longitudinal information on all properties, buildings, addresses and apartments in Sweden.
Finished Projects
Social Stratification & Meritocracy
Stratification theory commonly puts education as the link between class of origin and class of destination. This system, where class is inherited through education and education inherited through class is often referred to as meritocracy. The concept of meritocracy – a society dominated by those with the most merits – has gained widespread support. Still, authoritarian and populist resurgences throughout the West indicate that ascriptive factors very much remain of import. So what is happening to meritocracy? In this doctoral project I address this question by studying the Swedish educational system and the phenomenon known as immigrant optimism.
Immigrant optimism refers to the fact that immigrants and children of immigrants tend to be more academically driven than expected given their socioeconomic backgrounds. This would result in advantage in the labor market, were it not for racialization and discrimination. As a result, immigrant optimism is at the intersection of the competing principles of attainment and ascription, making it an ideal subject for a project concerned with meritocracy.