Vem var "alltid redo"? : En studie om socioekonomiska förhållanden av flickscouter och dess föräldrar i Norrbotten mellan 1946-1951

Sammanfattning: This study aims to get insight into how the socio-economic background of girl scouts in Norrbotten, Sweden, looked like in the 1940s and 1950s: what were their parents occupations and their social class belonging? The study also emphasises differences in social background between girl scout groups in different places in Norrbotten and whether the girl scouts social background differed from the social structure in their places of residence. I have identified the girl scouts names from the scout corps member charts and traced parents and their occupations using the genealogical website arkivdigital.se. Next, we classified the parental occupations through the internationally recognised twelve social group HISCLASS system.Theoretically, the study uses James Vela-McConnell"s social affinity theory, which helps usunderstand how groups are constructed and why we choose the groups we do. McConnell argues that when groups form we look for something to connect us to others, that being a feeling of affection or simply a geographical closeness, for instance, as neighbours. McConnell also raises the idea that we can have a proximity not only physically but also socially. The social connection can be quite small, as in what group in class we belong to but also which social class our families are apart of. This is what this study has fokus on. The study includes girl scout corps in five towns in Norrbotten County in northernmost Sweden between 1946 and 1951: Piteå, Övertorneå, Boden, Haparanda and Pajala. A majority of the girlscouts had middle-class backgrounds. However, there were differences between the towns. In the military town Boden, most girl scout parents were upper-class militaries with higher ranks. In the nearby Piteå, where the sawmill and pulp and paper industries played significant roles, most of the girl scout parents belonged to the middle class. However, several also came from the working classas they were employees of the lumber mill. We can here see that the difference in location and that which town the girl scouts lived in greatly affected the social class of the scout group in a town as a whole. These differences continue to show themselves between the different towns and especially between the smaller and larger ones depending how usual service jobs were, which more often where in higher HISCLASS groups.