Parents' reflections on choice of neighbourhood and their transformative potential for future conceptualisations of the nation

Abstract

This article contends that parents' reflections on choice of neighbourhood provide insights into a transformative potential for future conceptualisations of the nation. Built on 30 interviews in Oslo, Norway, this study shows that when choosing a neighbourhood for where their children will grow up, parents create the spatial and social frame of the everyday life within which their children will be socialised—of which socialisation into the nation is one element. Through their sociospatial preferences, one elicits their notions on who belongs where not only in the neighbourhoods of Oslo but also to the nation. Balancing ideals and values both for their children and for themselves, the parents draw on multiple temporalities—past, present, and future—of an imagined community, which in turn offer evidence that how nation and diversity coexist, changes with time. A change, where diversity is envisioned as an integral part of the nation, as both contradictory and intertwined.

Investigating everyday acts of contributing as ‘admission tickets’ to belong to the nation in Norway

“…Hence, the conceptualisation of the relationship between contributing and belonging as argued in this study echoes Nagel's () argument that the making of sameness is a relational process. This is a process that foregrounds the dynamic everyday nation and provides the opportunity for challenging national imaginaries of who is assumed to ‘naturally’ belong in the future (Erdal and Strømsø ; Strømsø forthcoming).…”