Welcome to a CEDAR seminar with Sania Dzalbe, Postdoctoral fellow at Department of Geography and Centre for Regional Science, Umeå University
Shared resilience: Migrant families’ experiences of settling in and coping with the Northvolt shutdown in Skellefteå
This paper examines how international migrant families in northern Sweden navigated the crisis triggered by the bankruptcy of Northvolt, a €6‑billion green‑industrial megaproject. After relocating on the promise of career opportunities in an emerging “green” industry, families were confronted with mass redundancies in 2024 and Northvolt’s bankruptcy in 2025. Unlike classic studies of industrial decline, which focus on long‑established local communities, this study analyses migrant families who were still in the process of developing social networks, learning the language, and securing residence rights at the moment the crisis hit. Drawing on feminist geographies of social reproduction and Katz’s (2004) framework of resilience, reworking, and resistance, the analysis is based on the data collected in one focus group interview and seven in-depth interviews with women who moved due to their own or their partners’ employment at Northvolt.
We find that families’ resilience was based on exchanges of emotional support, managing everyday care, and volunteering. Reworking strategies included deskilling, occupational flexibility, navigating migration and labour‑market constraints, and building networks across municipal, civil‑society, and expatriate settings. Resistance practices emerged when participants confronted discriminatory treatment, asserted professional worth, mobilised unions, or created self‑employment opportunities to avoid exploitative conditions.
The findings highlight that responses to crisis are collective household efforts shaped by gendered divisions of labour. More broadly, the study argues that green industrial transformations in peripheral regions require planning not only for capital investment and labour supply but also for the everyday social reproduction that enables migrant families to remain, integrate, and contribute over time. In this context, families—not only firms—are central to the long‑term viability of regional development initiatives.
All interested are welcome to participate in CEDAR seminars. The seminars are held on floor 4 NBET and online via Zoom. If you wish to participate via zoom contact Mojgan Padyab.
