Den långvariga bostadskrisen i Sverige har gjort tillgången på bostäder allt mer begränsad på hyresmarknaden och allt dyrare gällande det ägda boendet. Samtidigt har osäkra och tillfälliga anställningsformer ökat i Sverige sedan 1990-talet. Både dessa trender ökar utan tvekan otryggheten i det dagliga livet för en växande andel av svenska hushåll. 

Denna rapport fokuserar på en central, men ofta förbisedd, aspekt av bostadsmarknaden, nämligen det ägda boendet. Mer specifikt redogör rapporten för bolånemarknaden i Sverige och undersöker villkoren och möjligheterna för de med osäkra anställningar i synnerhet. Rapportens övergripande syfte är att undersöka vilka aktörer och möjligheter dessa ställs inför i strävan efter ett ägt boende, och hur deras situation skiljer sig åt jämfört med dem med fasta anställningar.

Vidare diskuterar vi några kritiska konsekvenser av den ökade finansiella inkluderingen av atypiskt sysselsatta på bolånemarknaden, något som inte har blivit adresserat av existerande forskning. Materialet består bland annat av rapporter från Riksbanken, Finansinspektionen, bankers årsredovisningar, offentliga rapporter och relevanta aktörers hemsidor. Utöver det återfinns material från intervjuer (N = 13) med bankrepresentanter vi genomfört under 2023. 

The longstanding housing affordability crisis in Sweden has made access to housing increasingly difficult in the rental market, and increasingly expensive in the homeownership market. At the same time, precarious, intermittent, and temporary forms of work have also increased in Sweden since the 1990s. Both these trends are arguably increasing insecurity in the daily life of growing portion of Swedish households.

This study focuses on a prominent yet often overlooked side of the housing market, i.e. homeownership. Specifically, it accounts for the mortgage market in Sweden, and investigates the conditions and opportunities for those with precarious employments. The overall purpose is to examine which actors and possibilities this group is facing in search of owned housing, and how their situation differs from that of permanent employees. 

Moreover, we discuss some critical implications of the growing financial inclusivity of atypical workers in the mortgage market which have not been tackled by existing research. The material consists of reports form government agencies, annual reports from banks, public reports, and relevant actors’ websites. In addition, material from interviews (N = 13) conducted with bank representatives in 2023 is included. 

Policy mobility literature invites us to consider the power-laden processes of how urban policies are exported, mimicked, and transformed in different urban contexts. However, recent critique has highlighted the need for a fuller understanding of urban policy context to understand where and when policies come to be implemented in new settings and how they are transformed. The purpose of this study is to explore understandings of urban policy context in a comparative study of policy mobility, and specifically relations between internationally packaged concepts, local pilot projects and national level actors. We develop a framework for understanding these relations in policy mobility based on case studies of BID policy development in Sweden and Denmark drawing on both Policy Mobility literature and a Multiple Streams Approach. The main finding is that local pilots play a key role in translating packaged policy concepts but also serve as ‘proof of concept’ for further institutionalization. The way these pilots are discursively situated in relation to ‘problems’ is therefore of central importance for further implementation. Furthermore, the study highlights the role of policy entrepreneurs that connect local pilots (and discursive problems) with national level actors, and political opportunities.

This article offers an overview of neighbourhood-based BIDs (NBIDs) in Sweden. Swedish NBIDs tend to appear in stigmatized residential areas engaging with pressing sets of urban issues that have been longstanding concern of social policy. Their overarching goal is raising property values in neighborhoods on the edge between urban decline and (re)development potential. Emerging in a neoliberalizing institutional context, NBIDs present themselves as correctives to public-policy failures by promoting property-oriented solutions. The adaptation of the BID model in the Swedish ‘post-welfare’ landscape, however, exhibits, and arguably exacerbates, the shortcomings found in BID elsewhere. Their opaque institutional structure and lack of accountability contribute to curbing democratic influence over local development, thus reinforcing spatial inequalities. We argue that the growing political advocacy for the institutionalization of the BID model in Sweden presents a new milestone in the neoliberalization of urban governance, as private actors are promoted to legitimate co-creators of urban policy.

Why and how do artists engage in activities that likely lead to gentrification, despite their awareness of its effects and despite that they will possibly be among the displaced groups? I highlight a missing link in existing literature explaining the recurring patterns of art scenes and gentrification in US cities– the cyclicality of artistic careers trajectories in art scenes’ spatiality. The study shows that the shifted reputation of the neighborhood in early stages of gentrification is instrumental to positioning individual cultural producers in the cultural field through the local art scene’s collective accumulation of symbolic capital. Early-career artists accumulate symbolic capital through space. Paired with the capitalist and racist legacies of the US city, this contributes to reproducing gentrification. Theoretically, the article draws from Bourdieu’s theory of the cultural field and geographical literature of the symbolic economy. Empirically, it draws on interviews with cultural producers in Bushwick (Brooklyn, NYC).

What happens when versions of the past become silenced, suppressed, or privileged due to urban restructuring? In what ways are the interpretations and performances of ‘the past’ linked to urban gentrification, marginalization, displacement, and social responses? Authors explore a variety of attempts to interrupt and interrogate urban restructuring, and to imagine alternative forms of urban organization, produced by diverse coalitions of resisting groups and individuals. Armed with historical narratives, oral histories, objects, physical built environment, memorials, and intangible aspects of heritage that include traditions, local knowledge and experiences, memories, authors challenge the ‘devaluation’ of their neighborhoods in official heritage and development narratives.