Sarah Valez in the Industrial landscape in Norrk枚ping where IAS is situated. Photo credit: Mikael S枚nne
Two important grants
The research council Formas has awarded 2,74 million SEK for the research project 鈥淭he Role of the Built Environment in Immigrant Integration鈥� that will start in June next year and go on for three years. Almost at the same time The Swedish Research Council awarded 4,4 million SEK for the project 鈥淭he Effects of Public and Private Housing Markets on Ethnic Segregation鈥�, also a three-year program.
The project leader in both cases is Sarah Valdez, senior lecturer and researcher at The Institute for Analytical Sociology, IAS.
Congratulations on receiving two important grants!
- Thank you very much. I'm really excited about these two new projects.
You got two projects and 6,1 million SEK approved within a couple of weeks. Did you anticipate that or were you surprised?
- Well, you can never be sure. I think I鈥檓 very lucky because I鈥檓 part of several significant grants, and I鈥檓 very happy to have them.
You麓re already involved in several other projects here at IAS. Will you have time for all of them now?
- I will. But I may have to minimize my time in some of the other projects. Luckily, we have a good allocation of the workload that makes that possible.
Ok, the first project is called 鈥淭he role of the Built Environment in Immigrant Integration鈥�. Tell us about it!
- Yes, this is a really interesting project to me because it鈥檚 built rather directly on my PhD-thesis in which I did case studies of segregation in several cities across Denmark and Sweden and where my main interest was Link枚ping. Now I鈥檝e teamed up with two researchers at American universities to continue this work, one of them has developed a segregation index to measure travel time between locations as a way to show how separated people are within a city.
- Segregation is not just that you live in different parts of a city, but also that people can be separated even if they live near each other. This measure asks how long it will take to travel to another neighborhood, for example if we live just 500 meters across but have a very big roadway between us and we must walk on the bridges, that travel time will be longer.
Time is more important than place when it comes to segregation?
- Yes sometimes, it鈥檚 a measure that sort of approximates how quickly you can travel between two parts of a city where different groups are living. It can tell us how separate they really are in daily life, and it shows us more than just looking at a map.
"We want to do research that's relevant to the real world", says Sarah Valdez. Photo credit: Mikael S枚nne
- Furthermore, in this project we will also study two integration projects in Link枚ping and Norrk枚ping and what effect they may have on immigrant segregation. In Link枚ping it麓s a proposed urban garden between Sk盲ggetorp and the central parts of the city, in Norrk枚ping it麓s a community center.
The other project 鈥淭he Effects of Public and Private Housing Markets on Ethnic Segregation鈥� deals with the same problem in a different way. What will you do in this project?
- We鈥檙e basically looking into the distribution of different types of housing - single family homes versus apartment blocks and rental versus owned houses, for example - to see how that effects ethnic segregation. We鈥檒l examine what opportunities people have to access these types of houses, which is related to things like the interest rates for mortgages and tax incentives for owning a house versus renting a house. We鈥檒l also examine housing policies, such as rent controls and queues.
- After that we hope to generate models by putting all this together, computer aided models that approximate reality. We鈥檙e hoping that if we model each individuals鈥� choices, the sum of all these small choices will result in a macro level pattern that can be useful. And once we have a computer simulation running, we can explore counterfactuals; for example, what happens if we change the housing queue rules, how will people sort out and will that reduce or increase segregation? We鈥檒l see if we can model all the individual choices together simultaneously to create a real housing market.
A model of a whole market, it sounds complicated.
- Yes, it is complicated. That鈥檚 why we鈥檒l use computer simulations. These are not simple linear models, there is usually some kind of dynamic happening where one individual鈥檚 choice impacts another. This is also the riskiest part of the project, but I鈥檓 confident that our team will at least make some important headway in this area.
It also sounds like you鈥檙e approaching policy-making and politics in both project?
- That鈥檚 certainly not our explicit goal, but we want to do research that鈥檚 relevant to the real world. We鈥檒l explore different options for possible policy interventions, for example when it comes to housing queue time. We鈥檒l also present our results in Swedish and at round table conferences. But of course, it鈥檚 up to the policy-makers whether they want to consider our results or not.
Good luck with your work!
- Thank you.
