| Summary: | This essay is based on an interest in how certain residential areas are portrayed in the public debate as "problem areas" which allows other to stigmatization these neighborhoods with negative prejudices. The residential area Ersboda is one of the major residential area in the Swedish town Umeå, that can stand as an example of this phenomenon. The unique with the residential area Ersboda is that the area don’t have much problem compare to other areas and it therefore interesting to ask why the residential area Ersboda are stamped with negative prejudices? The purpose of this essay is therefore to create an understanding why and how the residential area Ersboda in Umeå are stigmatised by the surroundings. The essay aims to answer the following questions: • When did the stigmatization of the residential area Ersboda begin? • How does the stigmatization of the residential area Ersboda manifest itself? • What could be the underlying factors for the stigmatization of Ersboda? In this study, qualitative interviews have been conducted with residents and working people in the residential area Ersboda. The result showed that one contributing reasons why Ersboda and its inhabitants become stigmatized is that there is a relatively large influx of immigrants in the 1990s. The second factor is based on the violent disturbances among a small part of the area's young residents during the same time period. The reason why Ersboda still are stigmatized depends possibly not only on the surrounding prejudices about the area's ethnic inhabitans and the media's negative reports. The underlying factor can be due to a power difference between established (the surrounding) and outsiders (those living and working on Ersboda). The conclusion is therefore that the stigma of Ersboda not depend on the number of problems, but rather on the basis that it has established a power relationship between "us" and "them" and where residents lack the means of power to break the stigmatization.
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