Description:
The segregated city and the school as a multicultural meeting ground – upper secondary pupils and their narratives on urban space and the significance of place. The freedom to choose which school you want to attend in the Swedish school system can be understoodas an opportunity to overcome the urban segregation. At the same timestudies show that the freedom of choice increases the segregation according to the pupils’ performance and their social and ethnic background. In this context we find Berydsgymnaiset in the suburb of Beryd southeast of Storstaden interesting, since pupils coming from the whole city attend this school. We conducted deep interviews with ten pupils at this school to hear their reflections on the segregated urban space and their view on the school as a meeting place. The study shows clearly that the divided and hierarchically structured urban space is a distinctive part of their conceptualizing of the world. Another result is that this school only to a very small extent functions as a place for overcoming segregation; even though its open for pupils from all over town, the most prominent feature of the situation within the school is how the urban segregation and the distance between it’s different spaces is reflected in a way that also affects the relationships between the pupils.