Introduction

As a consequence of the increasing marketization and financialization of the Nordic housing market there is a growing concern about displacement pressures in larger cities due to intensified gentrification, shortage of affordable housing and so-called renoviction processes. In a Swedish context, an emerging housing debate which engages both scholars and activists, has shed light on the lack of active national housing politics during the last decades, leaving housing provision almost entirely to private actors (Hedin et al., 2012; Polanska et al., 2019; Listerborn et al., 2020). The housing question and the risk of displacement is concrete, material and an everyday matter, but it also triggers scientific theoretical and methodological challenges as these struggles do not look the same all over the world and therefor they need to be understood in their respective socio-spatial context. This chapter aims to illustrate the complexities and spatialities of urban and housing research, with a main focus on urban renewal processes in Sweden. Our aim is to highlight the importance of theorizing socio-spatial processes, such as displacement, contextually. Displacement research in a Nordic context differs from other spatial contexts, and has to be theorized accordingly within its local situation. At the same time, the differences may be lesser if we take a closer look at the underlying – often global – processes.

There are significant differences amongst the national housing markets that together constitute the Nordic region, but generally speaking it could be argued that, in spite of far-reaching privatization, Nordic tenants benefits from relatively high protection levels because of historical reasons. Tenants are historically well-organised, in Sweden through the national Tenants Union (formed in 1923), which has given them considerable political influence. This historical level of tenant protection stands in the way of outright evictions, but also of larger plans of both real estate owners and municipal governments to pursue gentrification aims or municipal desires to alter the existing social-demographic fabric of the city, such as attracting high-income earners, diminishing the number of inhabitants on benefits, or both. Displacement, whether followed by gentrification or not, takes place not through evictions but through a bundle of stealth tactics or indirect maneuvers, as we shall see later. It also follows that displacement processes, since they are indirect, are generally significantly slower in a Nordic context. The slow pace of displacement can even be a deliberate tactic of housing owners since they exhaust the tenant who may simply decide to move. Further, research attention for displacement in an Anglo-American context is intimately linked to gentrification research originating in New York in the 1970s and 1980s (for example Hartman, 1982). Again, gentrification processes in the Nordic region are certainly widespread but they are, generally speaking, more subtle, indirect, slower; they are, as Larsen and Lund Hansen (2008) call it based on observations in Copenhagen, more ‘gentle’ or what Catharina Thörn (2011) called ‘soft policies of exclusion’, even though consequences for individuals can be substantial in the long run.

The peculiar conditions under which displacement occurs in a Nordic context as for example that housing owners and municipal authorities are forced into indirect, slow and sophisticated tactics that exploit legal weaknesses, challenges our taken-for-granted theoretical and methodological parameters. Theoretically, displacement should in the first place be understood as a process, rather than an actual outcome whereby a person is removed from one point to another in a Euclidian space. The process may lead to actual displacement but often results in the persons in question deciding to leave themselves, which may theoretically not be regarded as displacement but is de facto indirect displacement. In a Nordic context, it is important to grasp these cumbersome, confusing and almost invisible processes of displacement. This also implies a serious methodological challenge, since these processes can not be grasped in statistics, and the slow nature of displacement makes it difficult to identify who is actually affected by displacement process and what the process actually does to people in the absence of direct eviction. In a study of displacement in the city of Uppsala, Pull (2020) has tried to solve this challenge through a longitudinal study of victims of displacement processes that capture the social and emotional difficulties displaces are facing even if they are not de facto displaced.

Housing markets are at the same time local and global, on the one hand clearly path-dependent and embedded in historically defined housing regimes (Bengtsson & Ruonavaara, 2010), and on the other hand shaped by global financial processes (Aalbers, 2015), which could lead to rapid changes on the housing market. Even though the Nordic countries share similar welfare ambitions, there are well documented differences between the Nordic housing markets (Bengtsson et al., 2013). The Nordic housing markets, like in other parts of the world, have been increasingly challenged by neoliberal planning paradigms, globalisation and the dismantling of the welfare state. Not the least, the universal welfare model that promises housing for all is regarded as expensive, bureaucratic and inefficient. Housing markets have on the one hand been deregulated resulting in for example the abolition of subsides, while on the other hand they have been reregulated to facilitate ‘market forces’ to provide housing (Ruonavaara & Bengtsson, 2013). In the Nordic context, no other country than Sweden has installed a more far-reaching market-led housing system (see for example Lind and Lundström (2007). In this chapter we will focus on research conducted on Swedish displacement processes, while the conclusions are relevant for all Nordic countries and beyond.

The background of the local context and particularities of the Swedish housing market is essential to theorize the socio-spatial power relations between tenants and landlords, but what are the theoretical considerations we may ignore through imported concepts that do not fit the local muddy social examples? And how could we develop a theoretical framework relevant to the Nordic context?

In the following, a historical overview of Swedish displacement pressure to bring forward the importance of how theorizations are constitutive of how we understand socio-spatial relations. By arguing that the theoretical framework limits or directs the object of research in a specific way, we want to highlight the importance of theoretical tools that do not exclude place-specific situations. If we only are to look for actual displacement and evictions, we may miss out on the more complex processes of ‘situated’ displacement pressure and struggles to fight housing insecurity. The conclusion reflects on the challenges and benefits of ‘translating’ concepts and trying to adjust them to specific socio-spatial contexts.

Swedish Displacement Trajectories

Research on displacement has a long trajectory in Western geography and urban studies.

Learning from empirical research in Sweden, the Nordic experiences differ from the Anglo-American context, and provide basis for a theoretical discussion on how to understand the specificities of displacement processes in previously established welfare societies. The conceptual framework developed in the Anglo-American context may provide an understanding for global political-economic processes, but to a lesser degree assists in analyzing the complexity of local policies and practices. Housing regimes and welfare policies are place-specific and path-dependent, and ‘interfere’ with market paradigms.

Geographical differences are commonly discussed within housing studies, in particular in relation to comparative housing studies, but are to a lesser degree integrated in displacement research. In this chapter, we initially investigate some Swedish manifestations of displacement that cannot easily be grasped by conceptual apparatuses often developed in an Anglo-American context.

In Sweden, three large waves of displacement can be discerned in modern times. The largest wave of displacement took place during the 1960s and 1970s as part of the so-called Million Program that sought to add one million new dwellings to the existing housing stock during a period of 10 years. In order to provide the Swedish population at large with modern, well-equipped and affordable homes, significant parts of the existing inner-city housing stock had to be demolished. Precise statistics are not available but around 125,000 dwellings were demolished between 1959 and 1975. With an average household size of 2.8 in 1975, this means that approximately 350,000 persons faced housing displacement in that period (Pull, 2020). Most literature of that period focuses on the economic and technical aspects of the Million Program efforts; hardly any systematic research on the social fall-out of the large-scale demolition processes was carried out. But some studies offered descriptions of the anxieties and broken-down social networks people were facing (e.g., Björnberg et al., 1979; Egerö et al., 1965; Selander, 1975; see also Pull, 2020).

The second major wave of displacement took place in the wake of the renewal policies starting in 1983. Due to an increasing dislike and a decreasing demand for Million Program dwellings, the so-called ROT program – ‘Reparation, Ombyggnad, Tillbyggnad’, or ‘Repair, Rebuild, Extend’ – now focused on the renewal of the older housing stock and the early dwellings of the Million Program: the aim was to renew 425,000 housing units in a period of 10 years. Not only the physical state of housing had to be renewed but also the social fabric: the existing population of dwellings in poor condition was regarded as part of the problem and had to be removed (Salonen, 1997). Again, statistics are not available but a study by Wiktorin (1989) revealed that around two thirds of the original population had moved after renovation works.

A third wave of displacement is currently taking place in the wake of large-scale renovation processes of the now half-a-century old Million Program housing stock which started in the 2010s. A survey amongst 119 landlords owning 12% of this housing stock indicates that around half of it (471,000 of 922,000 units) is in need of renovation. Cost estimates of this massive renovation undertaking vary 300–500 billion Swedish Kronor (45-75bn USD) (Boverket, 2014), 215 billion Swedish Kronor (38bn USD) (TMF, 2013) to 300–900 billion (45-135bn USD) (Industrifakta, 2013). The majority of landlords seek to finance these major renovations through rent increases, according to a survey amongst 51 landlords owning Million Program housing stock (Jacobsson, 2013).

The processes of displacement in a Swedish (Nordic) context are often more indirect and slower than what some displacement literature from other parts in the world indicates, but its eventual outcomes can have similar damaging effects on its victims. The worries of not being able to pay the rent and spending time searching for an alternative apartment are not only time-consuming, they also generate stress. The threat of homelessness makes tenants prioritize rent before food and other essentials (Pull & Richard, 2019). Leaving behind a neighborhood with attachments, friends and support systems can have devastating effects, not the least for families with children (Samzelius, 2020; Davidson, 2009). These very ‘private’ consequences are of course difficult to research and document and will not be easily covered by quantitative surveys.

In 2014, Boverket (The Swedish National Board for Housing, Building and Planning) was commissioned to report on ‘renovictions’ in Sweden – movement patterns due to extensive renovations. The report is based on register data from Statistics Sweden where individuals were followed two years before renovation to three years after the renovation. It showed that major renovations lead to increases in movement up to 80%, or that twenty five percent of the tenants are likely to move due to renovations. These movements also correlate with income levels and demonstrate that people on low income are more likely to move than the households with higher incomes. In particular families with children tend to move. The groups that move out tend to move to areas where the rents are lower, which indicates reinforced residualization and segregation (Boverket, 2014).

In addition to the displacement pressure through renovation schemes of rental housing, it should also be clarified that there is a shortage of affordable housing in Sweden, leading to long queues for housing in larger cities, and a growing sublet market where the new housing precariat ends up (Listerborn, 2021). Since the so-called system shift in Swedish politics in the early 1990s, where Swedish housing policies turned neoliberal (Hedin et al., 2012), a large amount of rental housing has been turned into tenant-owner occupation, rendering even less housing to the rental sector and affordability.

In the first report in Sweden on renovictions, Westin (2011) illustrates how different tenants react to planned major renovations. Some actively seek to influence the plans while others feel powerless and paralyzed. Others do not worry and trust that things will be fine. Taking an active stance can lead to positive emotions, if tenants are heard, but negative emotions can be amplified if they are not heard. The possibilities to influence the process is often limited (Boverket, 2014), but there is an emerging housing movement against renovictions in Sweden today, organized mainly outside the Tenants Union (Gustafsson et al., 2019; Listerborn et al., 2020). These movements partly aim to call the politicians’ attention to this problem, but their main purpose is to learn about the tenant’s rights within the existing legal framework. Scholar activists have written handbooks on how to fight renoviction (Krusell et al., 2016; Polanska et al., 2019).

The rental sector is protected through housing security policies – a direct result from housing struggles in the first half of the twentieth century and the strong position of the Swedish Union of Tenants. Within this socio-spatial context there is it still some kind of trust for the existing institutions to engage with the problems and to get financial support if threatened by displacement. However, the emerging social movements may indicate that this trust is not intact and that the threat of displacement is real, which is confirmed by Boverket’s, 2014 report. As part of the 1991 housing policy reform, the ‘system shift’, the municipality’s social service would step in if displacement would occur. Today only individuals with obvious social problems (addiction or mental illness) are prioritized to get support from the social services in the larger cities (Sahlin, 2013). Recent research confirms that the displacement pressure is a real threat (Westin, 2011; Pull, 2020).

Displacement in the City of Landskrona

Understanding displacement processes needs a spatially localized conceptual and methodological toolbox. One emblematic case of how displacement processes may look like in Sweden today, is the case of Landskrona. Similar processes are known from other municipalities, often referred to as ‘social dumping’, or as the municipal government labels it, “actively contributing to relocation to another municipality” (aktiv medverkan till bosättning i annan kommun) (Statskontoret, 2020). This is a way for municipalities to avoid residents depending on social benefits to settle down in their municipality. Either the municipality makes it very difficult for such households to move to the city, or they actively help them to find housing in another municipality – often small rural municipalities with available housing but a weak labor market. This practice is in the legal grey zone but still happens.

In the case of Landskrona, which we have described in length elsewhere (Baeten & Listerborn, 2015, 2021; Listerborn & Baeten, 2016), a new policy called the Crossroad Plan was developed in 2012 to change the social composition of residents. The process caught attention when the Mayor declared in the local newspaper: ‘My message to all welfare benefit recipients is: do not move to Landskrona. If you have a problem, then please ask elsewhere where you are more likely to get attention’ (Lönnaeus, 2012). In the same interview, he stated that ‘we have a city center characterized by social benefit dependency’. Furthermore, one of the architects of the Crossroads Plan stated in a newspaper interview that the city has allowed in ‘a category of people we do not want’ and that these ‘unserious’ tenants should be ‘returned to the municipalities where they come from’ (Brant, 2011).

Since there is no legal possibility to evict tenants if they have a first-hand contract and pay their rent, the municipality had to develop other plans to get at these people ‘they do not want’. The strategy involved targeting the landlords and property owners. With the aim to change the social composition within the inner city, the municipality wanted to gain control over the housing market to influence immigration and emigration plans that would allegedly result in positive outcomes for the tax base level, social benefit dependency, school results, criminality, unemployment and activity rates. Through developing a common rental policy within the inner city, private landlords were forced to follow these new stricter rental policies. The CEO of Landskrona Stadsutveckling AB, a municipal company, declared in an interview,

There are some property owners who are not interested. We try to identify those who do not care, and we will mobilize the authorities [such as environmental inspection and fire safety control]. If you only want a property as a cash-cow, then that should cost; that should not be fun. We will use all means possible to force property owners to jump on the development bandwagon. (Petterson 2013)

In 2017, twenty-three landlords officially subscribed to the city’s rental policy, covering 75% of the total rental housing stock (Landskrona Stadsutveckling, 2017), leading to a reduction in both the volume of the housing stock available to the poor as well as the number of ‘unserious landlords’ (those who do not follow the municipality’s rental policy). The municipality thus developed its own bundle of tactics (Blomley, 2004) to indirectly influence the social composition of Landskrona’s inhabitants by putting pressure on landlords. In that way, the city gains the power to indirectly ban low-income people from the local housing stock, without enforcement or eviction, or without even addressing low-income people directly. The result is a slow, fragmented and piecemeal displacement process without clear, measurable outcomes; it is a set of displacement tactics ‘by stealth’ that can hardly be held accountable for its consequences since no institution is directly in charge of banning low-income groups from the city.

Five years after the implementation of the plan, Landskrona’s tax base has not improved, but the number of people on social benefits has decreased. However, those figures follow national levels and could be due to national policies. Decreasing social expenditures reveal nothing about the amount of poor people in the city or the number of people on social benefits: it can simply be the result of austerity policies or stricter admission policies. In fact, the share of inhabitants on low income – the main group potentially in need of social benefits – has remained stable over the past few years in Landskrona, from 14.3% in 2014 to 14.4 % in 2016 (Socialstyrelsen, 2018). The only ‘success’ of the policy is that the migratory movements of benefit-dependent people have decreased; before the rental policy in 2012, 898 benefit-dependent persons moved to Landskrona; in 2020, that figure had decreased to 687 (Landskrona Stadsutveckling AB, 2020). But it remains unclear whether this is a direct result of the rental policy that disencourages landlords from renting out to benefit-dependent persons or whether this is a result of the continuous verbal violence against poor people by local politicians, which would discourage poor people to move to Landskrona in the first place.

The aggregated effect was small but the local press reported on several cases where these measures had drastic effects on individual households who were left with no place to go after the rental restrictions had expelled them effectively from reasonable access to housing. Others are under pressure from anxiety, and temporality as an outcome of their precarious position on the housing market (Baeten & Listerborn, 2021). This reluctance to accept citizens on low income or benefits may lead to the emergence of ‘city-less citizens’: those who have nowhere to go or are being pushed around between municipalities.

As the Swedish housing market is built upon an idea of tenure neutrality and universal welfare provision with no specific support for low-income households besides housing allowances, there is no safety net when there is a shortage of affordable housing. When housing costs increase and income rates are lagging behind, while welfare systems simultaneously are being dismantled, the unequal Swedish housing market triggers specific challenges and many households and individuals find it hard to enter the ‘regular’ housing market. So how then, do we theoretically and empirically capture these vague, slow and ambivalent practices on the housing market, but with possible long-term consequences?

Conclusion: Displacement, Concepts and Nordic Peculiarities

By arguing that the theoretical framework limits or directs the object of research in a specific way, we want to highlight the importance of theoretical tools that do not exclude place-specific situations. If we only are to look for actual displacement and evictions, we may miss out on the more complex processes of ‘situated’ displacement pressure and struggles to fight housing insecurity. Displacement is clearly spatial (Davidsson, 2009), however, and belongs to the most urgent urban issues (Marcuse, 1985). It is important to disentangle displacement from gentrification research, as gentrification by definition is always preceded by displacement, but local empirical evidence as discussed in this chapter demonstrates how displacement can occur without subsequent gentrification. The treatment of gentrification and displacement as two sides of the same coin has its origins in early gentrification research in a specific Anglo-American context (Baeten et al., 2021) and it is therefore important to not uncritically copy this established conceptual twin if we are to understand the particularities of displacement in a Swedish and Nordic context.

We tried develop a theoretical lens that captures a broader repertoire of displacement tactics – a ‘bundle of tactics’ – based in a specific socio-spatial context. If the displacements preceding the construction of the Million Program housing stock in the 1960s could be understood as ‘traditional’ displacement, the physical removal of bodies from A to B in a Euclidian space, then contemporary forms of displacement in a Nordic context are more complex and more difficult to grasp with specific concepts. Displacement now takes place through a repertoire of removal tactics that together constitute a bundle that can be mobilized to a greater or lesser extent by authorities and private actors alike in an attempt to change the social fabric of the city or to increase profit, as we have illustrated by the Landskrona case. Unlike the physical displacement of bodies to make place for urban renewal projects, contemporary displacement tactics do not necessarily have the desired effect of immediately removing ‘undesired’ bodies; rather, such tactics put pressure on the unwanted that may eventually result in ‘self-imposed’ displacement. It makes the displacement process cumbersome, confusing and not easy to observe as it is not clear whether persons are actually ‘displaced’ or have given in to the lasting displacement pressure and decide to move themselves. Thus, the current displacement repertoire has another temporality than ‘traditional’ displacement (Persdotter et al., 2021); displacement can be significantly stretched out in time today (see, e.g., Pull, 2020) longitudinal study of displacement processes in the Swedish city of Uppsala), and it can be followed by gentrification – or not. In order to grasp such geographical varieties, we have conceptualized displacement starting from our empirical observations and material on the ground, rather than taking as a starting point already established hypotheses and concepts developed in different empirical contexts. In sum, the contemporary proliferation of displacement tools and tactics specifically in a Nordic context obliges us more than ever to shy away from the uncritical import of a conceptual apparatus that grew of other socio-spatial context and develop particular understandings of displacement based on Nordic empirical observations.