Global Processes and Local Worlds
Today’s global challenges involve issues such as climate change, migration, segregation, and uneven economic development. These issues cannot be solved on the global or local scale alone, but require cooperation between actors and institutions at various geographic scales.
Members of the Global Processes Local Worlds research cluster utilize multi-level spatial analysis and examine how global, (supra)national and regional processes and institutions shape local outcomes, and how local actors engage with global developments. This relational perspective provides insights into differential local outcomes. At the same time, processes of digitization are creating both new forms of space as well as new understandings of local-global flows.
Members of the research cluster use qualitative methods (interviews, participant observation, ethnographic studies, document analysis), quantitative methods (analysis of register data), and Geographic Information Science to examine the geographic distribution of individuals, groups, firms, organizations, and the relations between them. These spatial perspectives can provide a more holistic understanding of global processes and local issues, providing both theoretical and empirical insights into social issues such as the uneven distribution of resources, access to power, and (im)mobility of people.
Current research topics include:
- Intermediation, place and value creation: Exploring the processes and spaces of ‘curation’
- Culture, creativity and economy
- Managing digital transformation of physical space
- Public space. Importance of physical morphology, property-owning structure and various activities for urban living.
- Segregation and marketization of education
- Housing segregation in Sweden
- Labour market integration of highly skilled refugees in Sweden, Germany and The Netherlands
- Young refugees’ sense of belonging in Norway
- Entrepreneurial motivation of recent Arab refugee entrepreneurship in Sweden
- Middle East and North African diaspora entrepreneurship in Europe
- The role of Moroccan diaspora entrepreneurs in cross-border trade
- Homemaking, belonging and the asylum process for sexual orientation and gender identity/expression refugees in Sweden