”Jag förknippar Stockholm med karriär, att man vill bli något. Att man inte är nöjd med livets färdiga väg som vi är i Skellefteå.” : En kvalitativ studie om hur individens identitet och självbild påverkas av bostadsorten

Sammanfattning: The title of the essay is “I associate Stockholm with career focused, that you want to become something. That you’re not satisfied with the predetermined way of life that we are in Skellefteå” and is written by Erika Lundström and Josefin Möller. The purpose of this essay is to examine how the place of residence affects the individuals identity. The study is based on ten qualitative interviews with individuals residing and growing up in two different communities called Skellefteå kommun and Stockholms kommun in Sweden. A number of theories within identity creation, from for example Bauman (2004) and Pripp (2001), are used to understand the phenomena. The results demonstrate that the respondents experience a pride in living in each community. The respondents attitudes are reflected by their place of residence and how they experiences expectations to live by the community valuations to fit in. The respondents from Stockholms kommun experienced an expectation to have an education and a growing career while the respondents from Skellefteå kommun experienced an expectation to start a family and have a stable job. Their own identity is strengthened when the respondents talks about themselves in a relation to the other community which creates a kind of power imbalance between the communities.