"The best place to grow up, the worst place to live..." : Negotiating place identity through young residents and police narratives in Järva's vulnerable areas

Sammanfattning

This study examines how young resident sin Rinkeby, Tensta and Hjulsta construct and negotiate place identity in relation to the Swedish Police Authority’s classification of these neighborhoods as vulnerable or particularly vulnerable areas. Spatial categorization has increasingly shaped public perceptions, governance practices and representations of space within the Swedish urban context in recent years. Drawing on the concept of place identity and the theoretical frameworks of territorial stigmatization and the production of space, the study explores how institutional classifications are reproduced, contested and negotiated through everyday experiences and police narratives. Data was collected through 15 semi-structured interviews with residents and police representatives, complemented by 12 walking interviews with residents aged 18-21. Using thematic analysis and an iterative inductive approach, the findings reveal that residents primarily construct place identity through everyday experiences, social cohesion, communal spaces and resistance to external representations – rather than institutional classifications. In contrast, police representatives described the neighborhoods through urban othering, high institutional presence and a calmer reality shaped by declining violence. Taken together, the study demonstrates how place identity in Järva is produced through tensions between external categorization and lived experience, where institutional labels influence spatial meaning but do not determine residents’ sense of belonging.