Students with an immigrant background travel longer distances to attend attractive schools

In Stockholm, free choice at the upper secondary level appears to partly weaken patterns of residential segregation. Instead, inequality is expressed through longer commuting distances for students with an immigrant background. For students with a native background, shorter commuting distances are linked to living closer to attractive schools—that is, upper secondary schools with higher average household incomes and a higher share of students with a native background. These schools are often located in central areas or affluent neighbourhoods, where more students with a native background also live. To gain access to these schools, students with an immigrant background who live in lower-income neighbourhoods are forced to commute longer distances. This applies in particular to students with origins in countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

In the Stockholm region, commuting across municipal boundaries is common: central municipalities, especially Stockholm itself, attract many students, while suburban municipalities often “export” students.

“High-performing students with an immigrant background sometimes prioritise a school’s programme or reputation over proximity to home. It is not a lack of schools or upper secondary programmes near their residential area that leads students to choose more distant schools. On the contrary, the study shows that students with an immigrant background, on average, live closer to schools offering their chosen programmes than students with a native background,” says Susanne Urban, Professor of Sociology at IBF, who co-authored the study with Simone Scarpa at Umeå University. The study has been published in the journal Cities.

Despite this, students with an immigrant background travel longer distances to attend schools with characteristics similar to those chosen by students with a native background. According to the study, female students are more likely to choose a school that involves a longer commute from home. One possible interpretation is that this reflects differences in educational strategies and choice patterns between men and women.

“Taken together, the results show that school choice in the Stockholm region is shaped through an interaction between residential segregation and the uneven geographical distribution of schools. Even though all students formally have the opportunity to choose schools outside their residential area, the uneven spatial distribution of schools’ social and economic characteristics influences which schools are actually chosen. There is a risk that free school choice reproduces the very patterns of exclusion it claims to counteract,” says Susanne Urban.