The study looks at how migrant families who moved to Skellefteå for jobs at Northvolt navigate the dual challenge of settling in while facing job loss and insecurity. By focusing on everyday life and the role of the family, the paper examines how these households respond to the closure with limited time to build social networks and resources.
In this paper, we look at migrant families who moved to Skellefteå for jobs at Northvolt and how they navigate the dual challenge of settling in a new place while coping with job loss and insecurity. We center families as a key but often overlooked dimension of regional development, highlighting family life as a site of both social reproduction and economic production. While previous studies of industrial closure mainly focus on labor markets, this paper shifts attention to the experiences of families and everyday life. Based on one focus group interview and seven individual interviews with women in migrant families connected to Northvolt, we examine how these families face challenges with limited time to build social networks and other resources that typically support labor market mobility and job insecurity. We draw on feminist geography and Katz’s (2004) framework of resilience, reworking, and resistance to analyse how families settle in and respond to Northvolt’s closure.
Bio
Sania Dzalbe is a geographer who currently works as postdoctoral researcher at CERUM. Her research evolves around coping strategies in relation to economic crises. Anna Baranowska-Rataj is professor of Demography at CEDAR.
