Stockholm university

Research project Sustainable vertical childhoods?

Families' apartment accommodation and children's mobility.

Transport and mobility are intrinsic parts of people’s everyday life, but inhabitants in socially vulnerable areas make fewer trips per person and per week compared to the national average, make fewer leisure related trips including trips to relatives and friends, and carry out fewer trips by car.

Studies of transport poverty or transport-related social exclusion are scarce in Sweden. There is a pressing need for qualitative knowledge on how, where and when different groups of people move and travel. 

Project description

The aim of this project is therefore to investigate how families living in three socially deprived and ethnically diverse neighborhoods in middle-sized cities in Sweden, move around on an everyday basis, and how family members manage and experience their everyday mobility. Case studies with families living in socially vulnerable areas in three middle sized Swedish will be carried out, applying a multi method approach, which include mobility diaries, photo elicitation and walking interviews.

The research questions guiding the project is:

  1. How do parents and children in socially deprived neighborhoods move and travel on an everyday basis?
  2. In what way does gender, age, class and ethnicity intersect in the practices and experiences of families everyday mobilities? What forms of barriers and resources do the families manage?
  3. Are families in socially deprived areas in risk of transport poverty and/or transport related exclusion? If so, in what ways?
  4. What are the implications of the mobility of families in socially deprived neighborhoods for achieving a just transport system and sustainable urbanism?
     

Project members

Project managers

Danielle Ekman Ladru

Universitetslektor

Department of Child and Youth Studies
Danielle 2023

Members

Sofia Cele

Docent, universiteteslektor

Kulturgeografiska institutionen, Uppsala universitet
Sofia Cele, docent, Uppsala universitet.

Tanja Joelsson

Universitetslektor, docent

Department of Child and Youth Studies
Tanja Joelsson