At the moment there are several ongoing research projects at the Institute for Futures Studies that analyses segregation patterns and dynamics. One of the projects studies segregation in schools. One question the researchers have tried to answer is whether there is a critical threshold when schools become segregated. For instance, if there is a specific point of ethnic diversity that becomes unacceptable for native swedes who then leave or avoid enrolling to these schools in the first place. The study looked at a number of secondary compulsory schools in Stockholm and how the ethnical composition of these schools had changed over a period of twelve years in relation to various factors (parents’ average income, average grades as an indicator of school quality, neighborhood characteristics such as ethnic composition). To measure ethnical composition a so called perceived foreignness index was build, takes into account the fact that various immigrant groups are perceived differently by native swedes, for instance that immigrants from Germany are perceived more similar than immigrants from Russia, Iran or China. The index is thus more differentiated than a simple ratio of immigrant students.
The circles represent various schools in Stockholm municipality, with colours representing geographical position of the schools. They are distributed on a scale of perceived foreignness index that measures ethnical composition in 2002. A hypothetical school (no such school in the data) with 50 % of Swedes and 50 % of a ethnicity with the highest World Value Survey based cultural distance (Middle East/North Africa with around 3.1) would have a perceived foreignness index of 1.55. The school with the highest perceived foreignness index in the data was a school in Kista, with a perceived foreignness index of 2.7. In this school we had around 20 percent Swedish students, around 20 percent with Irak origin, 10 percent with Turkish origin, 7 percent with Iranian background and then a mix of students from the Middle East, Pakistan, former Yugoslavia, East Europe and South America.
The study did found a relation between a high perceived foreignness index (beyond a certain threshold) and a strong decrease in the proportion of native Swedish students in a school. The schools that have high perceived foreignness index are also the ones that are segregated or at risk at becoming segregated. However there is no simple threshold, but a rather complex interactive dynamic, where the threshold is related to other factors, such as the characteristics of the neighborhoods where the school is located. Meaning that the threshold that would result in a decline of native students, differ from school to school depending on factors such as the average income of the parents, or the ethnic composition of the surrounding neighborhood. The results also show that school segregation is clearly linked to neighborhood segregation. The five schools which have the highest perceived foreignness index are all located in the north-west Stockholm area (Kista, Husby etcetera). On the other hand all schools in central Stockholm display low perceived foreignness index values (see also figure).
The project is ongoing and will next study individual-level data on school segregation in Oslo and Stockholm.
