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Sjöberg, S., Kings, L. (2021)Suburban commons: the rise of suburban social movements and new urban commonsin marginalized neighborhoods in StockholmNordic Social Work Researchhttps://doi.org/10.1080/2156857X.2021.1982753

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Suburban commons: the rise of suburbansocial movements and new urban commons inmarginalized neighbourhoods in Stockholm

Stefan Sjöberg & Lisa Kings

To cite this article: Stefan Sjöberg & Lisa Kings (2021): Suburban commons: the rise of suburbansocial movements and new urban commons in marginalized neighbourhoods in Stockholm, NordicSocial Work Research, DOI: 10.1080/2156857X.2021.1982753

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Suburban commons: the rise of suburban social movements and new urban commons in marginalized neighbourhoods in StockholmStefan Sjöberg a and Lisa Kingsb

aThe Faculty of Health and Occupational Studies, Department of Social Work and Criminology, University of Gävle, Gävle, Sweden; bSchool of Social Sciences, Södertörn University, Stockholm, Sweden

ABSTRACTThe Swedish universal welfare state has transformed since the 1990s into a mixed welfare model with increasing deregulation, recommodification, and reverse distribution from the public to the private sector where capital and influence have concentrated. In major cities such as Stockholm, this has resulted in a polarization where groups in the city centre and residential areas have accumulated wealth and resources while groups in marginalized suburbs and neighbourhoods have faced increas-ing social exclusion and marginalization. Public sector social work has long focused on individual case work, whereas this development calls for increasing community work initiatives. In this article, we analyse the rise of urban social movements mobilizing for inclusion, influence, and social justice as important aspects of contemporary community work in the Swedish urban periphery. Through analysis of semi-structured interviews with community workers and activists as well as media articles, reports, and web-based materials, the results show how the mobilization of the organization Megafonen has contributed to the development of new social institutions and urban commons.

KEYWORDS community work; social mobilization; social movements; collective empowerment; urban commons

Introduction

Swedish society has gone through fundamental changes in recent decades. A reverse redistribution has been carried out, from the public to the private sector. The universal welfare model has been diminished and transformed to a mixed welfare model, with an increasing share of private enterprises operating on welfare markets (Allelin et al. 2021). This long-term development has resulted in increasing inequalities and polarization in society, which is expressed spatially in the bigger cities. Capital and resources have accumulated in the inner cities and exclusive villa neighbourhoods, while inhabitants of marginalized neighbourhoods face increasing exclusion where gaps regarding living standards, life chances, social service, and health conditions are prevalent (Bremberg, Slättman, and Alarcón 2015; Edling 2015).

Within this context, new social movements began to emerge in marginalized neighbourhoods in Sweden around 2010. Urban movements such as Megafonen in Stockholm and Pantrarna in Gothenburg were started by young activists from the suburbs who wanted to do something constructive to change prevailing conditions. For these activists, the notion of ‘orten’ (‘neighbor-hood’ or simply ‘the place’), both imagined and lived, is usually referred to as a locus for shared identity. Place is here used as a ground for collective mobilization of youth and employed to raise

CONTACT Stefan Sjöberg stefan.sjoberg@hig.se

NORDIC SOCIAL WORK RESEARCH https://doi.org/10.1080/2156857X.2021.1982753

© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.

consciousness on social inequality, racialization, marginalization, segregation, and stigmatization of the urban periphery and its inhabitants. In their claims and activities, these urban movements merge local rootedness with critical consciousness of the effects of these wider structural- institutional conditions. During some years they were positioned in Swedish public as a voice against the polarized development of a contemporary urban social landscape (Schierup, Ålund, and Kings 2014).

Mobilization of social movements has always been a crucial form of community work (Rothman 1995; Sjöberg and Turunen 2018), and in Sweden the labour and women’s movements have historically been important mobilizing actors. In this context, we see the emergence of urban movements in Sweden as a reaction against perceived marginalization, dependence, and co- optation, with established civil society actors in the urban periphery seen as being too dependent on state financial support. Starting as loose networks, over the years these movements have catalysed a development of new organizational forms. In this article, we shed light on this long- term development within the context of the cluster of Stockholm suburbs (Akalla, Husby, Kista, Rinkeby, Tensta, Hjulsta) known as Järvafältet.

The aim of this article is to explore the mobilization of new urban movements and the subsequent emergence of new social institutions in marginalized neighbourhoods in Stockholm. The main research questions are:

● Why and how did new social movements arise around 2010 in marginalized neighbourhoods of Stockholm?

● Why and how did new forms of more formalized institutions emerge in the years that followed?

Transformation of the welfare model contributing to growing inequalities, polarization, and marginalization

The Swedish universal welfare model was built on a regulating welfare state, decommodification of welfare, and tax-based redistribution from resource-rich groups of the private sector to resource- poor groups (Esping-Andersen 1990; Olson 1990). However, many changes have occurred since the beginning of the 1990s. The development in Sweden from 1980 onwards has been characterized by deregulation, recommodification, cuts in public expenditure, and a reverse redistribution from the public to the private sector, where capital and wealth have accumulated among the wealthiest elite (Allelin et al. 2021). The welfare sector was deregulated in the 1990s resulting in privatizations and welfare markets. Welfare services, still tax-financed, have increasingly been carried out by large welfare companies (Larsson, Letell, and Thörn 2012; Righard, Johansson, and Salonen 2015; SOU 2016:78). The universal welfare model has been transformed to a mixed welfare model with increasing market liberal elements (Johansson, Arvidson, and Johansson 2015).

In an international perspective, Sweden ranks high when it comes to privatizations as a share of GDP (Allelin et al. 2021). The combination of financial crises in the 1990s, the Maastricht EU- convergence criteria stipulating a reduced public sector, and influences from neo-liberal ideology resulted in huge cut-downs of public sector (Bergh 2013; Kommittén välfärdsbokslut 2000; Sandberg 2013). The development has resulted in a less-equal distribution of welfare both within cities and between urban and rural areas. Private welfare institutions tend to be situated in affluent geographical areas, and customers with a stronger combination of cultural, social, and economic capital (Bourdieu 1995) are better able to access welfare services. The resources follow the custo-mers, the social right to good-quality welfare is increasingly eroded, and inequality and polarization between groups and areas are increasing (Allelin et al. 2021).

This long-term societal transformation has resulted in both an immense concentration of capital and wealth (Therborn 2013) and increasing marginalization and impoverishment of groups and communities. This is particularly evident in urban environments, where certain groups have

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accumulated large property and capital values in the city centre and residential areas, while excluded groups live in marginalized suburban areas (Wacquant 2008). Social exclusion is generally defined as a multidimensional process including extensive long-term unemployment, high ill- health rates, passivity or low participation in national elections, lack of social interaction outside the marginalized area, little knowledge of and contacts with organizations and societal representa-tives, and a feeling of not being able to influence one’s life situation and being excluded or unwanted by established society and working life (Pierson 2009; Taket et al. 2009). This multidimensional picture is characteristic of the cluster of suburbs at Järvafältet in Stockholm (Bremberg, Slättman, and Alarcón 2015; Edling 2015) which is in focus in this article.

Community work, social movements, and urban commons

Social work has historically been based on three methods: individual case work, group work, and community work (Payne 2020; Stepney and Popple 2008). Community work has been carried out both within and outside the general field of social work as well as within and outside the public sector (Fook 2016). Within a universal welfare model, social work has primarily been organized and undertaken within the public sector. Community work became an established method within the public sector social work in Sweden during the 1960s and ‘70s but has never been the dominant method (Turunen 2009; Wahlberg 2013). It can be defined as social work with excluded groups in marginalized neighbourhoods and is based on meeting people and their needs where they live to prevent and counteract social problems, aiming to develop and improve vulnerable life situations and living environments (Sjöberg and Turunen 2018). Community work could serve to advise, educate, and collaborate, with the aim of helping people to adapt and integrate into established social structures, but could also be used to conscientize, activate, and mobilize collective power in order to change unequal social structures (Lindén 2009; Popple 2015).

Community work is closely related to the strategies and characteristics of the welfare state (Dominelli 2012; Sjöberg et al. 2018). When societies and welfare models undergo change, this affects the conditions for community work. The transformation of the Swedish welfare model has a two-fold general effect on social work and community work. Firstly, it creates polariza-tion and exclusion of groups and communities, resulting in worsened social conditions. Secondly, it means less resources are available for public sector social work to develop relevant measures. The social policy changes have contributed to a decline of community work and an increasing focus on individual case work (Turunen 2004, 2009). Municipal social services have been subject to cutbacks and new managerial practices including cost efficiency, increased monitoring and less time for clients (Sallnäs and Wiklund 2018; Tham 2018). The structural social problems of exclusion and marginalization of today cannot be tackled solely with individual case work. This is partly because of the practical impossibility of reaching and working with thousands of individuals sharing similar difficulties, but also – and essentially – because these problems are related to societal power structures that need community work comprising collective mobilization and empowerment in order to be changed (Adams 2008; Mullaly and West 2017). The decrease in public sector resources means however that the resources for public community work are insufficient to meet the multiple social problems in areas of advanced marginality (Sjöberg, Rambaree, and Jojo 2015; Sjöberg et al. 2018).

Taking Jack Rothman’s (1995) classification as a reference, it is reasonable to single out three main forms of community work in Sweden today: local development, social planning, and social mobilization (Sjöberg and Turunen 2018). Local development aims to increase participation and influence for development of local communities through creating dialogue, organizing activities, gathering resources, and creating networks and collaborations between different actors. Social planning concerns participation in community planning and develop-ment of services, and aims to incorporate social aspects into community planning (Sundh 1999; Turunen 2009). Social planning is expert-initiated, although it can include the involvement of

NORDIC SOCIAL WORK RESEARCH 3

the local community in planning processes. Social mobilization has a focus on collective empowerment processes and is based on organization and mobilization of excluded groups, voluntary organizations, and social movements for social change. One starting point is that there are unequal power relations in society and that influence, power, and resources need to be redistributed (Popple 2015).

The main forms of community work in the Nordic countries have for a long period been local development and social planning, while social mobilization has weakened. This also illuminates the emphasis on integration of excluded individuals into existing (power) structures of society, rather than mobilization of excluded groups for liberation from unequal social conditions and power relations (Lindén 2009). In this article we focus on the third form of community work, social mobilization, with specific focus on new urban social movements.

Social mobilization has its origins in the work done by grassroots organization and social movements to enable and increase popular participation in building and mobilizing resources for social development and change (Denvall, Heule, and Kristiansen 2016; Ronnby 1992). The focus is on the life situation and living conditions of excluded groups, the visibility of inequal-ities, and the building up of organization. The mobilization of social movements is characterized by being critical and transformative outside of traditional party politics. Usually the methods include, for example, demonstrations and social actions. Broad and spectacular mobilizations and public protests such as the Arab spring (Kurzman 2012), the manifestations in Belarus, the Solidarity movement before the collapse of the Soviet Empire, and the anti-austerity protest movements created by the economic crisis in the 2000s are usually what comes to mind when discussing public protests and social movements (Fominaya and Cox 2013). The exceptional circumstances leading up to these events usually last for short periods of time, while images of encompassing civil society activism observed under such occasions last for long time periods (Pyles 2020).

The emergence of new urban movements such as Megafonen in Sweden can be viewed as an attempt to materialize new social claims that during a period of time effectively mobilized urban youth, inspired collective action, and advocated for democratization and urban justice. This form of community work is perhaps not surprisingly innovative from an international perspective. However, within the individualized Swedish social work discourse, this urban social mobilization arose as something completely new, different, and perhaps even shocking. In this article we expand the horizon to the developments after the spectacular period of the new urban movements in Sweden, with Megafonen in the foreground, came to an end.

Through bottom-up organization of excluded groups themselves and building networks and collaboration with other actors, collective power resources and capacity building can be devel-oped in the work for democratic influence, social change, and justice (Craig 2018). Social mobilization thus relates to collective empowerment, which is based on excluded groups’ own experiences, awareness of the causes of problems, activation and participation, and building collective identity and common power resources (Adams 2008; Sjöberg, Rambaree, and Jojo 2015). This includes a conflict perspective and aims at equality and redistribution of power (Mullaly and West 2017).

Mobilizing social work in Sweden is rooted in the emergence of popular movements for democratization. Several projects were conducted within the public sector during the 1970s (Wahlberg 1992). This form of community work vanished during the 1980s and 1990s (Turunen 2004, 2009), but has gained renewed relevance during the 2000s. The work is now mainly conducted by social movements, and Megafonen in Stockholm has been one of the main actors in the urban setting. In the following, we will focus on how Megafonen mobilized in Husby and Järvafältet for citizens’ rights to influence and inclusion. Research shows that important foundations for commu-nity work in marginalized areas include identifying common problems and raising awareness of causes, creating collective identity and belonging, supporting activation and participation,

4 S. SJÖBERG AND L. KINGS

organizing social networks, and mobilizing of excluded groups themselves aimed at social change for increased participation, inclusion, power, and influence (Fook 2016; Popple 2015; Sjöberg et al. 2018).

Active common participation, social mobilization, and democratic influence for the inhabi-tants are also key features of the concept urban commons (Stavrides 2016). The commons can be defined as natural and societal resources accessible to all members of a community or society that collectives of people share and/or manage together (Ostrom 1990). Commons can also include the social practice of managing a resource by a community of users that self- governs through institutions that it has created. Commons is about common influence in and beyond the state and the market, and the idea that all people affected should have equal access to, right to participate in, and influence over decision-making processes that affect their lives (Ostrom 1990). The common unites people and brings them together (Lain Escande 2015). The concept can thus include communities but goes beyond that. Commons can be said to stand in opposition to commodities. Privatizations have reduced equality and shared access to resources, services, and places, especially in urban areas (Stavrides 2016). The common may be synonymous with the public, but the public becomes commons only when the citizens have real influence. Commons means more democracy rather than more state. Central to the commons is the community itself, not whether it exists in a private or public context and form of ownership (Ostrom 1990). However, deregulation, market models, and commodifica-tion of the public sector have weakened the common democratic influence over society’s resources.

Urban commons focus on the conditions for a socially sustainable urban development, aiming for increased accessibility, integration, and equality in order to promote the residents’ right to equal good health and well-being. They are urban common places and spaces where people meet and act together. Urban commons are related to common strategies for how the city’s residents should have equal access to, for example, clean air, water, nature areas, parks, streets and squares, malls, infrastructure, knowledge, service and care. This presupposes consideration of forms of ownership, administration, and distribution (Colding and Barthel 2013). The building of social relations and common resources creates conditions for common power and influence. Networks and self-organization are important foundations for urban commons through joint action, collective empowerment, and participatory democracy (Harvey 2012). In this article we show how the mobilization of urban movements has developed into new forms of urban commons.

Methodology

The background to this study consists of field work which has been recurring or continuously returning (Burawoy 2003) in marginalized areas of Stockholm and other Swedish cities since 2005. We have conducted studies related to social work, community work, civil society, collective empowerment and urban politics. Inspired by the discussion on community based participatory research in social work, a perspective closely related to participatory action research (Whyte 1998; Brydon-Miller, Greenwood, and Maguire 2003), we align with a perspective of social work that is change-oriented and loyal to the needs of marginalized communities (Branom 2012). This orienta-tion includes besides listening to the people concerned and writing scientific texts, in our case also to facilitate dialogue and co-creation through for example co-producing texts with local groups and inviting or participating in seminars and reflections (cf. Kings and León-Rosales 2021). This approach has been problematized on the basis that the researcher’s loyalty is divided between science and participation, meaning that objectivity and the validity of the research might be undermined. We consider that being aware of such risks is a prerequisite to avoid distortion bias. The use of action and participant research in general and community based participatory research in particular is according to us a way to avoid academic social work becoming isolated and

NORDIC SOCIAL WORK RESEARCH 5

disconnected from concrete problems. In the same vein, we consider it a way to democratize the research process, make research available, build trust, and take integrity into account (van der Meulen 2011).

This article is based on empirical data from a variety of sources. The primary material comprises 33 interviews with community workers and activists in urban social movements as well as representatives of other established civil society organizations in the marginalized neighbourhoods of Järvafältet, performed between 2012 and 2020. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with representatives of public sector community work units operating in Järva neighbourhoods such as social services field work groups and public housing companies social units, as well as representa-tives outside the public sector such as local voluntary organizations, established national civil society organizations and social movements. The selection of interviewees was made with respect to their key roles in civil society or public sector community work. Altogether, the interviews aim to grasp the perspectives and practice of community work of different groups and spheres in Järva. The interviews have been complemented by participant observation in urban spaces and online, which has been ongoing since 2012. Participant observations have been conducted in meetings of Megafonen, in open events organized by Megafonen, and in relevant meetings and events organized by others. Additional empirical material has been collected in the form of written material such as organizational statutes, accessible internal documents of movements and organizations, and other written sources.

The interviews were subjected to a thematic discourse analysis in which the ATLAS.ti software package was used to structure the empirical data and identify themes in the discursive material (Rambaree 2018). From this discourse analysis, the themes reflected in the subheadings in the results/analysis section below emerged.

The rise of urban social movements and the emergence of new forms of urban commons

Here we present and analyse the thematic stages of suburban mobilization in Stockholm, from emerging mobilization to the development of new urban commons. In our interviews with com-munity workers, they described a difficult situation of cutbacks and lack of resources. Both public and non-public sector community workers reported facing multidimensional problems and harder social conditions than before, where growing unemployment was recognized as a major problem. The combination of increasing social exclusion and lack of contacts between different vulnerable groups is a challenge for community work in the neighbourhoods. This general picture is common among community workers in Järvafältet.

The neighbourhoods of Järvafältet are characterized by migration and a continuous flux of people moving in and out of the area, as described by the community workers. From a critical social work perspective, it has been argued that neo-liberal globalization has resulted in dissolving of collectivity, creating a much more individualized society (Fook 2016; Stepney and Popple 2008), and this has also affected Swedish society. Conscientizing the community is one of the key functions of community work. The concept of conscientizing (conscientização) refers back to Freire’s peda-gogy of the oppressed (1971). According to Freire, conscientizing is a process in which the community starts to identify commonly experienced problems and learn and develop critical awareness of the social, political, and economic context and societal power structures. Based on critical consciousness, the community can become empowered, and its members can then mobilize and act together for rights, justice, and liberation from oppressive conditions. In conscientizing the community, a collective empowerment process can be initiated when people become aware of the dynamics of social inequality (Hur 2006).

The public sector community workers expressed in the interviews that they found it crucial to contribute to raising awareness within the community, but without a specific aim that it should lead to collective mobilization and social change of unequal power structures. They also talked about the

6 S. SJÖBERG AND L. KINGS

importance of networking. Networking is an important community work strategy for establishing contacts between individuals, groups, and organizations as a basis for an empowerment process. Collective empowerment develops when people act together to achieve social change (Hur 2006). However, the interviews with public sector community workers showed no direct aim of collective empowerment towards social change of inequalities and exclusion. The focus was on individual rather than collective empowerment, and a power perspective was lacking. In the search for initiatives for collective empowerment and social mobilization in Swedish urban periphery, we instead need to turn to emerging grassroots mobilization in civil society.

The rise of new urban movements

Urban movements such as Megafonen in Stockholm and Pantrarna in Gothenburg were started through grassroots organization by young people growing up and living in marginalized neigh-bourhoods. Megafonen started in Husby 2009 as a local newspaper called Megafonen which aimed to give a more balanced and positive image of the suburb and the people living there. A common experience at Järva was that only people who lived outside the area talked about Järva’s problems in public, and that journalists, politicians, and debaters competed to come up with the best solution to counteract the so-called ‘alienation’ (utanförskap) in the suburbs. Megafonen then developed into a formal member organization open to everyone who supported its aim and programme, and with a board appointed by democratic election at the association’s annual meeting. The association’s activities were led by the board and decided at member meetings. Activities were organized by the members together with volunteers, and information and mobilization for activities took place largely through social media (Al-Khamisi and Sjöberg 2018; Megafonen 2016).

The origin and later organizational orientation of Megafonen is also related to ‘Järvalyftet’, a city renewal project initiated by the Stockholm municipality and one of many such projects in Sweden (Stockholms stad 2007). This started in 2007, when among other things tenants in Husby received a letter with information that they would soon be evacuated from the apartments, as some of the apartment blocks built in the 1960s were to be demolished and replaced with modern terraced houses. This resulted in popular protests mobilized by residents, networks, and associations including Megafonen, where thousands of people gathered in campaigns, demonstrations, and media opinion work for their right to participate in the planning process of ‘the new Järva’. This contributed to the so-called ‘Järva dialogue’ between representatives of the City of Stockholm and involved actors and residents of Järvafältet from 2009. Megafonen was given the task of collecting views during the dialogue process arranged by the municipality. During this period, the organiza-tion had a close relationship with responsible officials and politicians. Citizens, associations, politicians, and officials agreed in the Järva dialogue that Järvalyftet would be not only an invest-ment in residential buildings and the physical outdoor environment, but above all an investment to counteract the unemployment and lack of educational opportunities existing in Järva (Al-Khamisi and Sjöberg 2018).

Megafonen has since worked with a diversity of issues and projects in the Järva suburbs, and has actively contributed to processes of collective empowerment comprising raising awareness of the causes of social exclusion and marginalization, building collective identity, social mobilization of excluded groups, and action for social change. In 2012, Megafonen spread to the neighbouring suburb Rinkeby and to Hässelby-Vällingby, and in 2013 to Norra Botkyrka southwest of Stockholm. During this time Megafonen recognized the importance of creating its own platforms and activities that allowed the inhabitants to develop intellectually, socially, and as equal citizens. Megafonen broadened its action repertoire with the overall aim of organizing young people in the suburbs to struggle for social and spatial justice (Al-Khamisi and Sjöberg 2018). The organization began to work based on the experiences of people in the neighbourhood of being socially excluded and marginalized. In January 2012, Megafonen participated in an occupation of the municipal com-munity centre Husby Träff together with the Husby residents’ network Järva’s Future, local

NORDIC SOCIAL WORK RESEARCH 7

associations (e.g. PRO, the association of pensioners), and local representatives from the political parties in opposition (social democrats, greens, and the left party) under the slogan ‘Husby demands respect’. The occupation was a protest against the decision by the public housing company Svenska Bostäder, which owned the building, to move Husby Träff to a smaller venue that first had to be renovated. This created frustration among residents and associations in the area, who felt that those who used the premises were not being involved in the decision process. The occupation of Husby Träff lasted two weeks and brought young activists together with local associations. It received a lot of attention; and even though the move was eventually completed, the occupation contributed to development of more general protests against cutbacks in the area, including growing criticism towards Järvalyftet and the Järva dialogue (Kings, Ålund, and Tahvilzadeh 2016).

When Megafonen became a mobilizing organization, the participants experienced that they were strengthened. The organization became a platform through which the members could act as subjects to influence their lives and work to improve the community. According to the organiza-tion’s program, Megafonen works to enable people in the suburbs to influence and participate in political decisions that affect them. It demands the development of and investment in jointly owned community services in the suburbs, opposes cuts in care and nursing, and emphasizes the need for investments in social activities and public meeting places such as citizens’ houses and leisure centres. In terms of counteracting social problems and crime, social initiatives are highlighted as being more effective than increased resources for security and surveillance measures. Megafonen opposes condominium conversions and advocates the construction of rental apartments with reasonable rents to guarantee everyone’s right to housing (Megafonen 2016).

Backlash and conflicting perspectives

Locally, Megafonen received criticism for actively taking part in the community centre occupation in 2012. Megafonen, once welcomed with open arms by local politicians and public officials, was now under pressure (cf. Kings, Ålund, and Tahvilzadeh 2016). The participation in the Järva dialogue was also considered a disappointment. Megafonen conveyed to responsible officials and politicians that the dialogue process created expectations among its participants that they would be given real opportunities to influence. Prior to the consultation meeting and the presentation of the structural plan in 2011, which followed the dialogues, the information provided to the residents was deficient. The plan for how Husby would change over the next 15–20 years involved major renovations and rebuilds of Husby centre, bridging of traffic separation, and plans for new housing on the Järva field. The plan’s focus on physical planning contrasted with the residents’ views and wishes. Many residents had pointed out that the social challenges were most important to address, while the physical changes could come second.

As representatives of the city and the residents had previously agreed that a transparent dialogue was an important prerequisite for the development and investments to be sustainable and appre-ciated, Megafonen and many other actors in Husby felt that the residents had now been excluded from influence. Järvalyftet was not considered to be locally based, and there was a fear that it would lead to gentrification (cf. Lees, Slater, and Wyly 2010) in parts of the area. Furthermore, in parallel to the conflict around Järvalyftet, vital services in Husby, such as health centres, schools, banks, and post offices, were closed down or privatized, despite the population’s mobilization against the development.

The pressure on Megafonen reached a new and unanticipated level when Megafonen also became known to the nationwide public in relation to the Husby/Järva riots in 2013. The day after the uprisings started, Megafonen invited national media to a press conference that was broadcast on national television. In their speech they condemned police brutality and the racist comments made by the police in their encounters with the youth. The press conference made Megafonen a central actor in the news reports of the uprisings. In its official statements, the organization avoided commenting on the burning of cars and destruction and instead persistently

8 S. SJÖBERG AND L. KINGS

underscored the need to steer the discussion away from the direct reactions and instead make structural explanations visible. Megafonen was heavily criticized for this, and some also accused it of taking part in the Husby/Järva riots of 2013, which the organization strongly denied.

The Järvalyftet process can be analysed in relation to the traditions and main forms of commu-nity work, as a power conflict between current forms of social planning and new social mobilization. The results can be summed up as showing that the social mobilization and action work were not being heard in the social planning. Following Mullaly and West (2017), social movements, associa-tions, and social workers all have an important task to contribute to the development of collective strategies where excluded groups can develop collective identity, solidarity, and resistance to vulnerability and oppression.

From a power perspective, the mobilization of collective strength and power resources among excluded groups is a central part of successful social work to counteract social exclusion and achieve social change of unequal living conditions (Adams 2008; Mullaly and West 2017; Payne 2020). This is especially evident when the social planning in Sweden, previously characterized by universal welfare ideology and a belief in social engineering in equality-creating community planning, has been increasingly replaced by urban planning and renewal projects influenced by market-liberal growth discourse. In historical debate over whether community work should or could emphasize consensus or conflict (cf. Wahlberg et al. 1978), we believe that it depends on the social conditions, the conditions for community work, and how different actors act. If social planning does not include real citizen influence, there is a great risk – as in Järvalyftet – that conflicts will arise between public institutions and their representatives and local populations. The risk is then that the inhabitants, instead of being an active part of the social planning, will mobilize against it and that this will lead to increasing rather than decreasing polarization. It is therefore of utmost importance that publicly initiated social work and social planning actively works for real civic influence and co- determination for the constructive actors and social movements that emerge.

New initiatives and networks: local development of urban commons

After the heyday of Megafonen, a plurality of different forms of mobilizations for urban justice have emerged. Examples in Stockholm include Ort till ort, Socialt Center Husby, Rörelsejurister (Movement lawyers), Förorten mot våld (Suburbs against violence) and Rådet av enade Kreoler (Council of united Creols). This is promising for the future, although the need for coordination, local rootedness, stability, and a longer-term perspective is still an urgent issue. Against this background, and from a community work perspective, the establishment of Folkets Husby (the people’s Husby) is an illustrative example of how social movements are essential for the practice of contemporary development with social mobilization potential in the Swedish urban periphery.

Folkets Husby’s premises cover 700 square metres and are centrally located on Husby square next to the metro and other commercial and social services. Political mobilization, cultural activities, social enterprises, association support, parties, and bingo all gather in the same premises. The daily activities contribute to meeting the residents’ individual and collective needs. Folkets Husby also enables local associations with their own space, which strengthens the opportunities for collaboration and asserts that the more strategic work is rooted in local forces and needs. As well as being an important symbolic value for the local civil society, the establishment of Folkets Husby has meant that a lasting physical hub has been created with a certain degree of autonomy that can bring together historical, contemporary, and future organizations in Husby and Järva. Through coopera-tion with established civil society organizations and the municipality, Folkets Husby has the possibility to become a facilitator for increased collaboration and trust between residents, organiza-tions, and officials in the public administration. As the organization itself puts it, ‘In cooperation with the rest of civil society, business, academia, and the municipality, we want to enable Sweden’s foremost citizen-driven meeting place where local anchoring and high quality are not contra-dictions. We have our ears to the ground and look forward!’ (Folkets Husby 2020, our translation).

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Historically, Folkets Husby’s work can be compared to how the labour movement as well as the settlement movement came together and built common houses in different parts of the world to unite different groups of people in the struggle for democratization (Kohn 2001; Turunen 2004). In this way, Folkets Husby works as an association-run community centre operating as a flexible, albeit physical, node of cooperation, democratization, and mobilization in a changing landscape of community work (Sjöberg and Turunen 2018). It can also be defined as a social centre which creates physical room for autonomous dialogue-oriented spaces, grounded in the everyday lives of inhabitants (cf. Martinez 2020). The emergence of Folkets Husby can be understood as a way to navigate in this urgent context where social work in the public sector is limited to the integration of excluded individuals and groups in existing social structures (Lindén 2009).

Folkets Husby grew out of the 2012 occupation of Husby Träff organized by Megafonen, among others. Even though the organizers lost the struggle for the original location, they were able to generate a strong mobilization of local associations and started a cooperation with the established civil society organization People’s House and Parks, founded already in 1932. At an early stage, representatives from Save the Children, the Tenants’ Association, and ABF Stockholm (The work-ers educational association) were also involved to support the process with their knowledge. With different forms of primarily external funding, including resources from the City of Stockholm, the operation of the premises was taken over in 2016. Folkets Husby is today run by about 50 associations, and many private individuals have become members and become involved in various ways. The board, nomination committee, and staff in the house consist of residents and people connected to the area (Al-Khamisi and Rezai 2019).

Invoking the radical history of Swedish popular movements such as the People’s Houses and Parks movement, along with more contemporary global movements, the emergence of Folkets Husby can be seen as a critique of a rigidity of established civil society organizations in Sweden today and their inability to relate to and mobilize marginalized groups in the city (Kings 2018). The need for a space of their own, although in cooperation with more established actors, follows in line with the discussion of urban commons. This implies to be able to turn within and beyond the private and public, the market and state (Ostrom 1990), to create space for influence and demo-cratization in an era of continuous commodification (Stavrides 2016). Folkets Husby can in this way serve as both an infrastructure for building social relations and a common resource for influence, power, and legitimacy. At the same time, the turn towards self-organization and the local that is implied in much of the discussions of urban commons is not to be regarded as the only way. Harvey (2012) warns of empirical limitations of urban commons and underscores the issue of intrigue with the concept of commons when it comes to shifting scales. Small samples cannot be directly translated to larger issues. Larger groups need a nested structure or some sort of hierarchical form of organization. Without taking into consideration the different possibilities at different levels, urban commons can risk being incorporated or co-opted into the contemporary market driven form of urbanization. We therefore see the establishment of Folkets Husby as one step of many in forming a counterweight to the contemporary unequal urban development. The future formation of a nested structure of larger groups for issues on a societal level cannot be achieved without having a stable base with deep roots, and here the emergence of suburban commons such as Folkets Husby can be a driving force.

Conclusion

Based on long-term studies of various forms of community work in Järvafältet in Stockholm, we argue in this article that there is a need for established societal actors such as public sector community workers to recognize, accept, and support the progressive social movements and urban commons representing the voices from marginalized neighbourhoods. Public sector com-munity workers tend to focus on individual rather than collective empowerment, which follows in

10 S. SJÖBERG AND L. KINGS

line with the transformation of the Swedish welfare state where public sector and municipal social services have experienced reduced resources, and community perspectives and methods have retreated in favour of an increased individualization.

Combating increasing inequalities, polarization, social exclusion, and marginalization of the urban periphery on a collective level has instead been left to the civic sphere. As a social response to these conditions, new urban social movements began to mobilize for inclusion, influence, social investments, and social justice in major cities in Sweden. Megafonen started in Husby as a local newspaper in 2009, and then developed after confrontation with the city renewal project Järvalyftet into a social movement working from a grassroots perspective with social mobilization and collective empowerment (Kings, Ålund, and Tahvilzadeh 2016). Megafonen, the local associations, and the inhabitants that took part in the Järva dialogue experienced this dialogue as a top-down process where they lacked real influence in the decision making. The conflict around Järvalyftet illustrates the different forms and potential clashes between publicly expert-controlled and market driven social planning on the one hand, and movement-based social mobilization and action for influence in decision-making processes on the other.

After the negative experiences during Järvalyftet, a variety of new forms of organization started to emerge. Folkets Husby, a citizen-driven social centre which prioritizes stability, long-term thinking, and dialogue, was established in 2016. Similar to both the historical commons of the labour and the settlement movements, Folkets Husby has the possibility to develop as a suburban common: a common place and platform for social and cultural activities and empowering of the people in the suburbs, working for local development rooted in the area and harbouring earlier and future social mobilizations.

Various forms of community workers need to network to promote social mobilization, local development, and social planning to prevent the ongoing social exclusion, polarization, and increasing influence of criminal networks in marginalized neighbourhoods. This calls for all constructive community actors to network and cooperate, including public sector actors such as professional field workers as well as the classical popular movements that today often lack a strong base in these areas. Here, spaces and places like Folkets Husby can be an important rendezvous for turning the development of marginalized neighbourhoods in a positive direction.

Acknowledgments

Research for this article was supported by the Swedish Research Council (grant number 2014-1557). We would like to offer special thanks to two anonymous reviewers for their insightful and constructive criticism.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

ORCID

Stefan Sjöberg http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4962-1540

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