Get It Together, Do Something! The Perceived Foundations of Poorly Performing Neighborhoods Among Inhabitants

Northern European states function fairly well for most people in the sense that their neighborhoods are characterized by low unemployment, low crime levels and good schools, but, for a sizable minority of individuals, this picture of their local area is incomplete or even false. Instead, they live in areas where people are more likely to be unemployed, be crime victims or in the close proximity of crimes and have children in poorly performing schools. In Sweden, as in many other societies in Europe, these areas tend to be inhabited by immigrants. Social scientists have spent considerable resources in examining why certain areas are disadvantaged. However, less effort has been devoted at asking people who live in the disadvantaged what they think are the underlying reasons. This paper addresses this issue by conducting repeated interviews with the same group of individuals. The surveys are conducted in one of four different languages: Arabic, English, Somali or Swedish. Specifically, we study if there are systematic attitudinal dimensions in the perceived root causes based on 1) the belief that the state should address inequalities or 2) the belief that it is up to the individual themselves to address the issues. This is studied with exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. That is, we study if there are two distinct dimensions of the perceived root causes of poorly performing neighborhoods or if these perceptions fall on one bi-polar dimension. Second, we examine how background factors of the respondents shape their perceptions of the underlying causes.