Description:
The aim of this article is to describe and discuss how elementaryschools, where the majority of pupils are of immigrant origin, andwhich are located in socially deprived urban neighbourhoods, arebeing affected by two somehow contradictory policies. On the onehand there is a school policy and one of its basic instruments, free-dom of choice, promoting competition and integration by allowingpupils to leave their socially and ethnically segregated schools. Onthe other hand there is an integration policy and one of its basicinstruments, the Urban Renewal Program (URP) that invested about155 million SEK in schools in the five most disadvantaged areas ofStockholm between 2000 and 2004. The URP has the same goals,but its main approach is, by improving schools, to get pupils to usefreedom of choice as little as possible. I show what the outcomes ofthis “meeting” between school and integration policy are and I alsoargue that the outcomes have to be analyzed and understood in thelight of current segregation processes in the city.