Meltem Karadag (p), Burak Asiliskende, Sinan Akyüz, Gül Berna Özcan, Çiğdem Varol

Jan Saarela

This study analyses Syrian migrants’ perception of temporality, spatial interactions and social identity building in Gaziantep, a frontier immigrant town historically linked to Syria, and in Kayseri, an inner-city with diverse immigration influx experience.

The conceptual approach of the analysis rests on space and place making theories (in particular theories of Lefebvre, 1991, 2005; Lynch, 1960; Jacobs, 1961), perspectives from architecture and urban planning (Boccagni, 2017; Pucci and Colleoni, 2016; and Schneekloth and Shibley, 1995), and sociology (Nawyn, 2016; Yuval-Davis, 2006). Our papers’ scholarly originality centres on its interdisciplinary contextualisation of a transformative relationship between migrants and their host city space and time. Migrants’ emotional attachments (Yuval-Davis, 2006) and spatial segregation is part of a complex process involving urban institutions and social stratification. Examining sense and place making processes help us understand better how collectively and individually migrants face temporal and spatial alienation, perceive cultural codes and re-locate new hybrid identities. Moreover, migrant identity, belonging and place making studies have generally focused on cities with migrant diasporas. Our research on the other hand considers migrants experiences in two medium sized inner cities that do not have established diaspora and transnational communities.

To study individual and collective identity forms and belongings we collected empirical evidence through a two-stage fieldwork. First, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 20 Syrian families from diverse socio-economic backgrounds in selected cities. Second, we designed an interactive urban tour which included cultural references, historical landmarks, and symbols of nationhood in each location. This experimental journey allowed participants go through a temporal journey through what host urban dwellers see as an iconic and defining landscape. The participants were asked to take photographs and write their feelings about objects and places that reminded them something or certain moving emotions.

Our conceptual approach and methods help broaden the field of immigration studies for different disciplines and supports building inclusive institutions not only for the benefit of immigrants but for all citizens in urban areas. Many international studies identify segregation of migrants in urban areas (such as Angotti, 2013; Marcuse, 2005) but local character and variations among cities are not well understood. Spatial segregation leads to structural inequalities, exclusion, and failure to implement democratic planning (İçduygu and Millet, 2016). Studies on Syrian refugees in Turkey identify that immigrant ghettos are being formed (Kavas, et al. 2019; Sönmez, 2019). Our project provides means to transform these immigrant territories to open, and sustainable spaces.

Amani Jaafer (p), Oskar Västberg, Emma Engström, Anders Karlström

Meltem Karadag

We estimate a dynamic discrete choice model of weekday travel behavior using anonymized mobile phone data in Stockholm. This model is then applied to generate a synthetic population and conduct a segregation analysis. Specifically, we examine the difference in mobility patterns between low and high income groups before (2019) and during (2020) the COVID-19 pandemic. We develop a latent-based framework in which positions of individuals are treated as latent variables and their connections to cell tow-
ers as observations. To calculate the expected value (EV) function we use backward induction, starting by the end of the day. We estimate the model using a Stochastic Expectation-Maximization (St-EM) algorithm. We show that our framework gives significant estimates, allowing us to infer trip in-
formation from the mobile records. The estimated model can be used to evaluate and simulate trip attributes and compare daily mobility patterns
across socioeconomic groups. Our findings reveal a substantial reduction in mobility for both low and high income groups between 2019 and 2020, in
terms of trip duration, frequency, and travel time. We also find a significant decrease in the number of people in the central commercial areas during the pandemic. The impact was more pronounced for the low income group. Further, we quantify segregation between the two groups using the spatial segregation index, suggesting an increase with more than 15%, from around 0.6 to around 0.7. These results indicate that the pandemic aggravated existing patterns of segregation in Stockholm. Our study contributes to the
literature on novel data-driven methods for urban planning and mobility, demonstrating the potential to use mobile phone data and agent-based models to improve policy decisions and promote more equitable transportation systems.

Marika Ventovuori (p), Tuukka Saarimaa

Amani Jaafer

This article examines the effects of a major urban renewal project on housing prices and displacement. Over the past decade Myllypuro, a neighbourhood in eastern Helsinki, has undergone a significant increase in reputation and overall neighborhood attractiveness after being the target of many urban revitalization programs, public projects, and infill development. If a neighborhood becomes more attractive, the demand for housing, and thus house prices and rents, should increase in the area. While an increase in housing stock value may then be seen as a sign of a successful renewal program, this increase in prices may also lead to gentrification and displacement of current low-income households who are no longer able to afford the higher housing costs.

Access to rich register data and detailed location information allows us to perform our analysis on the individual and household level, an opportunity that is rarely available but remarkably useful when analyzing neighborhood dynamics. The empirical part of this study is twofold. First, we employ a hedonic regression with a difference-in-difference estimator to analyze changes in the value of housing stock. Second, we use similar methods to assess the moving behavior of low-income residents in Myllypuro. We compare our results against two control groups: within Myllypuro and between Myllypuro and several similar neighborhoods in the vicinity.

Andrea Monti, Jan Saarela (p)

Marika Ventovuori

This paper adds to a growing field of research that brings older-generation family members into the study of individual mobility behaviour within countries. Research concerning internal migration increasingly acknowledge the role of family members also outside the household as important factors in mobility and immobility decisions. Our analysis is carried out from the perspective of immobility, thereby answering recent calls among geographers and migration scholars to acknowledge immobility and staying not merely as the absence of mobility, but as meaningful processes in their own right. Our overarching research question is whether there is an intergenerational transmission of immobility. Is the geographic immobility of parents and grandparents reflected in the immobility of individuals? Focus is given to differences by ethno-linguistic affiliation and regional characteristics, such as different levels of urbanity, the ethno-linguistic population composition, and geographical scale. Finland offers a highly useful case due to its official recognition of two official languages, and thereby two main ethno-linguistic groups, characterized by historically different mobility patterns and geographical concentrations. We use register data of the entire Finnish full population, meaning all individuals who ever had lived in Finland some time in the period 1970-2020. For all individuals, these administrative records include information on ethno-linguistic affiliation, measured through each person’s unique mother tongue. Although in practice many individuals are bilingual, only one mother tongue can be officially registered. Shifts are rare, and we have coded individuals as Swedish speakers if they have ever been registered as such. Additionally, all registered individuals have information on municipality and region of residence at birth, and links to the parents if they were alive at the end of 1970. Data are provided by Statistics Finland. We find that local ancestral ties are related to sedentary behaviour. The grandparental generation is especially related to Swedish speakers’ immobility, and having ties from two generations back is even more strongly associated with immobility. Intergenerational ties are especially related to immobility in regions characterized by urbanization. The results reflect the history of immobility accumulated across generations. Being historically more immobile, it is natural that Swedish speakers also show higher shares of local ancestry. Older generations function as important geographical attractors, as they provide an important social support network, especially in periods of family formation and change. Even older generations than those studied here are probably part of the mechanisms behind our results.