Understanding how people from different cultural, religious, and ethnic backgrounds coexist and interact has become crucially important due to global migration. One of the central approaches to these questions is segregation research, which has often focused on macrolevel segregation, such as residential separation. By contrast, this project will investigate microecological segregation in Helsinki. We will investigate how citizens from different ethnic backgrounds come to contact, stay apart, and use the city space. Our methods include field observations, survey, experience sampling, and interviews. The project will produce novel information about the physical, social, and psychological contexts of intergroup contact in Helsinki; about what people do together and apart, and how they describe their experiences of contact and the use of city space. Our project is the first initiative to investigate micro-level segregation in the Nordic, and among the first ones in the world.

2024

2028