This article investigates the potential of alternative research terminology to facilitate the utilisation of existing geographical conceptions of space and place in empirical studies of children's everyday lives. This is achieved by employing Clifford Geertz’s (1974. “‘From the Native’s Point of View’: On the Nature of Anthropological Understanding.” Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 28 (1): 26–45) concepts of ‘experience-near’ and ‘experience-distant’ in the context of research on children's everyday lives, and by presenting empirical data demonstrating how the daily material social practices of children result in the formation of dynamic spaces that transcend geographical boundaries and scales. The article proposes the use of neither a wholly experience-near nor wholly experience-distant name for space and place, and puts forward the notion of ‘doing an extended space of everyday life’ as a middle ground. Mundane action is suggested as a unit of analysis in empirical studies of children's geographies. The article concludes by suggesting that interviews and ‘talk’, as well as engagement with everyday life studies, could prove a fruitful avenue of enquiry in studies of children's everyday geographies. © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

During the last decade the intersection between social welfare research and the ecological crisis has been gaining increasing interest through discussions about sustainable welfare and eco-social policies. Less attention has been paid, however, to eco-social risks and to how climate change “will impact the nature and distribution of social risks across different parts of the population” (Hirvilammi et al. 2023), even though these kinds of risks which are directly related to human health and security are expected to increase with further global warming. In order to handle eco- social risks just and effective social security systems and policies will be needed.

However, in order to say something about welfare state responses and social protection schemes it is crucial to know in what way these eco-social risks are manifested and for example if certain groups in society are more or less exposed to them. Literature on disaster risks highlight an ‘exposure bias’, where it is argued that “poor people are disproportionally affected by natural hazards and disasters” (Hallegatte et al. 2020). Also the sustainable welfare literature point to the fact that socio-economically disadvantaged groups are disproportionally affected by climate change. With preliminary insights from the disaster research field, it seems as though this general narrative is valid in certain geographical contexts but not in all and not with respect to different kinds of eco-social risks. Research also points to the fact that in some cases high income residents will be more impacted by for example coastal flooding.

Moreover, and connected to the discussions about ‘exposure bias’, the concept of vulnerability is highly salient in the disaster literature, emphasizing that certain people or groups are particularly vulnerable to environmental hazards. There is, however, a lack of clarity on what this concept holds. It is often used generically, simply to say that inequalities in relation to environmental hazards exist. The concept per se is rarely defined or discussed, and the specifics of alleged inequalities and vulnerabilities are seldom clarified. In addition, there are different terms and concepts in vogue to denote inequalities, making it difficult to discern what alleged inequalities studies actually point at.

In this article we review the empirical research on eco-social risks in a European welfare regime context. The aim of the study is to present an overview of the empirical research on the unequal impacts of environmental hazards on people and communities in a number of European countries that each represent various European welfare regimes. In particular, the study aims to examine what people

and communities are considered to be particularly affected by environmental hazards in various European countries. We also analyze how the vulnerability concept, when being used, is conceptualized with respect to environmental hazards. Lastly, the study also aims to discuss potential welfare state responses and social protection schemes to meet these new kinds of eco-social risks that contemporary welfare states increasingly are faced with.

Presentationen rör barn och ungas vardagliga geografier samt det sociala arbetets etablerade förhållningssätt till desamma. Särskilt fokus kommer riktas mot hur erfarenhetsnära tolkningar av barn och ungas egna berättelser om ”den vanliga vardagen” kan utvidga det sociala arbetets förståelse för barn och ungas geografier, och hur dessa tolkningar kan berika såväl forskning som praktik i socialt arbete. Presentationen baseras på den etnografiska studien Förhöjd vardaglighet. Unga på landsbygden gör vardag som behandlar barn och ungas vardagsliv i svensk landsbygd.

In Sweden, the notion of gender identity is up for renegotiation and an increasing number of peopleare seeking professional support in relation to these issues. Professionals dealing with gender issuesare either the transgender health care, specialized in transgender issues, or general practitioners.The purpose of the study is to investigate professional work with people who are questioning theirgender identity. The study targets a smaller group of professionals who are specialized in workingwith transgender issues but operating outside the specialized medical care. Not being part of thenational standardized care, their work is less explored and less recognized, and takes the form ofprivate therapy or as counseling provided by NGOs. The study was carried out through interviewswith six professionals who provide support to people questioning their gender identity. Based on theprofessionals' descriptions, we ask how they work with people who are questioning their genderidentity, what knowledge emerges as important for the work and how their work is related to otherhealth care institutions that work with people who are questioning their gender identity. The resultsare interpreted within a theoretical framework on knowledge. The analysis points toward theimportance of accepting ambivalence and uncertainty, embracing a multi-faceted understanding ofgender and gender expression, and professional courage.

The year 2015 marked a rupture in the post-war development of refugee reception and integration policies in Sweden. This rupture involved both a radical change in refugee policy and practice, and a rupture in the long-held collective self-image of Sweden as a country with generous reception and integration policies (Scarpa & Schierup 2018). This article responds to the question of how social work students in Sweden understand and conceptualise these changing conditions. It draws on the concept of ontological insecurity and on two qualitative studies conducted in 2015 involving individual- and group interviews with social work students at different Swedish universities. The article discusses how the students’ responses reflect this moment of rupture. On a personal level, they express confusion and uncertainty as they experience the consequences of changing narratives in the public and private spheres. The analysis shows that although the students are engaged with the current political and social refugee situation, the social work education does not provide them with tools to unpack the situation. This reveals the limitations of a conceptual apparatus learned in social work education that is not up to date in responding to contemporary challenges. © (2024), (University of Duisburg). All rights reserved.

From the perspective of the Swedish education system, rural knowledge does not seem to be particularly important. Many young people in rural areas have deep and important knowledge that is invisible in school and during school time, both to teachers and to the young people themselves. This paper examines knowledge used in agriculture and animal husbandry, a type of knowledge that is particularly useful in rural areas but mostly invisible in the education system. Through observations and interviews with students and their teachers in rural Sweden, the paper provides a detailed account of the everyday social processes by which such knowledge is produced as 'nothing' (cf. Scott 2019) and occasionally as 'something'. The empirical basis of the paper is ethnographic data collected during a year and a half of fieldwork in a small village and village school in southern Sweden. The invisibility of young people's knowledge is understood here as the result of active practices. Invisibility and nothingness are thus not properties, but outcomes of social processes (Scott 2019). Some knowledge is made invisible, unnecessary and unimportant, while other knowledge is made visible, necessary and important (Burke 2023; Lässig 2016; Proctor & Schiebinger 2008). This paper shows such social practices as they unfold in the everyday lives of young people in rural areas, in and out of school.

References

Burke, Peter (2023) Ignorance: a global history, Yale University Press, New Haven

Lässig, Simone (2016). The history of knowledge and the expansion of the historical research agenda. Bulletin of the GHI Washington, 59 (Fall 2016), 29–58.

Proctor, Robert N. & Schiebinger, Londa (red.) (2008). Agnotology: the making and unmaking of ignorance.Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press 

Scott, Susie (2019). The social life of nothing: silence, invisibility and emptiness in tales of lost experience. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge

I avhandlingen skildras vardagslivet hos en grupp unga som bor på landsbygden. Medan vardagen i regel ses som grå och trist visar avhandlingen hur unga gör den till något särskilt, meningsfullt och roligt, hur de gör förhöjd vardaglighet. Genom att studera ungas vardagsliv med etnografiska metoder och teoretisk nyfikenhet når studien kunskap bortom de problembeskrivningar som vanligtvis skildrar såväl unga som landsbygderna. 

Avhandlingen visar hur unga gör förhöjd vardaglighet genom utfärder i vardagens vidgade rum, genom att skapa och bemästra osäkra situationer samt genom sällskap och samvaro med människor, djur och prylar. Kunskaper och lärande framträder som en genomgripande dimension av förhöjd vardaglighet, och ofta förbisedda vardagskunskaper uppmärksammas. Avhandlingen lyfter fram värdet av det invanda och alldagliga och visar på behovet av att socialt arbete och liknande praktikområden uppmärksammar vardagslivet och förhöjd vardaglighet.

Today, the terms ‘young people’ and ‘rural Sweden’ are automatically associated with problems. Young people are associated with various worrying issues, such as mental illness, stress, pressure at school, or internet risk. Being young and living in a rural community is often regarded as especially problematic. Rural life is thought dull, and bracketed with isolation, lack of meaningful activities, and being inferior to urban spaces. In this thesis, these well-known problematics are set aside in favour of studying young people’s everyday lives in a broader sense.

This thesis investigates how young people in rural areas do everyday life in interaction with their wider surroundings. Young people’s doings are interpreted against those of adult ‘interveners’, the professionals and volunteers who work with the young and intervene in their activities and places. Applying a symbolic interactionist approach, youngsters’ everyday activities and their doing of everyday life were investigated by ethnographic fieldwork in a Swedish village. The thesis is based on data from observations and interviews with young people and interveners in the village. The thesis introduces an analytical framework for interpreting everyday life. A ternary framework, it comprises three dimensions of everyday life: heightened everydayness, unnoticed everydayness, and dull everydayness. The framework has been created in response to the study’s empirical material, and serves as an analytical lens throughout the study.

The results show that young people and interveners portray everyday life in the village differently. Interveners focus primary on the problematic aspects of rural life. Youngsters instead highlight heightened everydayness. In accordance with young people’s representations of everyday life, the thesis thus focuses on heightened everydayness. The analysis shows how youngsters accomplish heightened everydayness by being on the move, physically and virtually; engaging in indeterminate or problematic situations; and being with cared-for people, animals and things. Based on the study’s results, it is found that everyday knowledge emerges as crucial for heightened everydayness. The thesis concludes that everyday life is valuable. Contrary to general understandings of everyday life as grey and dull, the study shows everyday life as rich in content, meaningful, and fun.

En el año 2015 el gobierno sueco dio un giro radical en sus políticas migratorias: cambió las leyes de asilo y protección de refugiados e introdujo el control permanente de las fronteras con el fin de reducir la inmigración de refugiados a Suecia. En este artículo, discutimos estos cambios desde la perspectiva de los estudiantes de trabajo social. Nuestro estudio se basa en material cualitativo recopilado durante una investigación realizada en el marco de un proyecto internacional, con el objetivo de desarrollar buenas prácticas para la recepción de refugiados recién llegados a Europa. Los estudiantes discutieron las respuestas de las autoridades suecas, expresaron sus inquietudes y preocupaciones sobre el impacto del cambio de política en los solicitantes de asilo, en la sociedad en general y en su propio entorno. Sus reflexiones expresan incertidumbre e impotencia, así como temor cuando constatan la creciente normalización del racismo, tanto en el espacio público como en su entorno inmediato. Identificamos los procesos descritos por los estudiantes como una pérdida creciente de identidad comunitaria. Los estudiantes sufren de esta pérdida al mismo tiempo que reducen sus interacciones sociales, contribuyendo de esa manera al reforzamiento de los mismos procesos que critican. Así, a pesar de que se posicionan en contra de las políticas de rechazo a los refugiados, cuando discuten la formación académica impartida en trabajo social en relación con la migración, mantienen la distancia entre los nacionales y los migrantes y refuerzan la división entre "nosotros" y "ellos".

In 2015, the Swedish government made a shift in migration policy: In order to reduce the amount of refugees arriving in Sweden, the government changed asylum and refugee protection laws, and introduced permanent border controls. In this article, we discuss these changes from the perspective of social work students. Our study is based on qualitative material compiled within the framework of an international project, with the aim of developing good practices in the reception of refugees recently arrived in Europe. The students discussed the responses of the Swedish authorities, expressed their anxieties and concerns about the impact of the policy shift on asylum seekers, society in general and their own environment. Their reflections express uncertainty and impotence, as well as fear, as they meet growing racism, both in public space and their immediate surroundings. We identify the processes described by the students as an increasing loss of community identity. Students suffer from this loss, which reduces their social interactions, contributing to the weakening of social ties and the reinforcement of the processes they criticize. Thus, despite being positioned against refrugee resusal policies, when they discuss Social Work education in relation to migration they maintain the distance between nationals and migrants and reinforce the division between "us" and "them".