PhD in Human Geography

Institute for Housing and Urban Research (IBF) and Department of Social and Economic Geography, Uppsala University.

Lina Hedman started her PhD education in February 2007 at the Department of Social and Economic Geography and has since April 2009 worked at the Institute for Housing and Urban Research (IBF). Her main fields of interest are residential mobility and selective moving patterns, residential segregation, and neighbourhood effects.

In June 8-10 2011 Lina, together with Roger Andersson, arranged the conference Neighbourhood Dynamics and Contextual Effects in Uppsala with 18 participants from eight different countries.

Project description:

The aim of my PhD project is to bridge the fields of residential mobility and neighbourhood effects. Most urban neighbourhoods are dynamic in terms of residents: households are leaving and being replaced by other. These moving households tend to be selective; neither the in-movers nor the out-movers are representative to the population as a whole. These two flows, in and out, tend furthermore to be different from one another. Previous research has for example shown how poverty neighbourhoods are reproduced by the out-mobility of wealthier households while the incomes of in-movers tend to match those of the remaining population. Although there are quite some studies addressing issues of selective mobility, most do so in relation to ethnic segregation and the likelihood of moving into poverty areas. Less is known about how households choose specific neighbourhoods (compared to neighbourhood types/clusters). More research is also needed on how neighbourhood factors affect mobility behaviour and patterns of selective mobility.

Selective mobility is a problem for neighbourhood effect research. The well-known selection problem addresses the potential bias of estimates that is caused by households actively choosing their neighbourhoods, thereby affecting their own outcomes and opportunities. But residential mobility may also cause other problems. Mobility means that people may not stay very long in the same neighbourhoods. It may cause neighbourhoods to change, in terms of characteristics (such as poverty level or share foreign born) or in terms of actual inhabitants. It may affect the entire urban structure and relative status of neighbourhoods. Yet, residential mobility is rarely addressed in neighbourhood effect research.

My PhD project aims to address selective mobility, both the larger flows and by studying the factors that affect households’ choose neighbourhoods. The thesis will incorporate these studies with a discussion of neighbourhood effects research, and proposes that such studies make use of a holistic framework that includes residential mobility.

Supervisors for the project are Professor Roger Andersson and Associate professor Irene Molina, both at the Institute for Housing and Urban Research.