Housing, Contexts, and the Well-Being of Children and Youth: A European Perspective

Roger Andersson
Uppsala University, Sweden

I have spent many years analyzing issues concerning urban segregation dynamics and effects from a demographic, social class, and ethnic perspective. Although my work focuses mostly on Sweden, U.S. scholars have provided much inspiration for me and other Europeans engaged in researching such issues. While I acknowledge that the urban scenes used to look very much different, with less presence of ethnic minorities, less segregation, less severe urban poverty, less violence, and more social cohesion in the European societies, urban realities are now gloomier in many European cities, including those in the northern European welfare states. It is still the case that phenomena such as racial segregation, homelessness, and poverty take on other, more severe proportions in the United States and that institutional differences are still profound, but research and policy issues addressed on both sides of the Atlantic seem to have converged; see, for instance, van Ham et al. (2012) and Manley et al. (2013) on neighborhood effects and related policy issues; Andersson and Musterd (2005) and van Gent, Musterd, and Ostendorf (2009) on urban area-based interventions; and Flouri, Mavroveli, and Midouhas (2013) on residential mobility and children’s behavior. I hope for and also foresee a development in which more research will continue in the footsteps of, for instance, Wacquant (2008) and engage with cross-Atlantic comparative studies related to different aspects of urban segregation processes and policy interventions.