Isabel Ramos Lobato

Technische Universität Dortmund | TUD · Fakultät Raumplanung, Fachgebiet Stadt- und Regionalsoziologie

School segregation is a key topic in urban, educational and inequality research. While previous studies have mainly focused on the effects of both parental school choice and residential segregation patterns on the composition of schools, we draw attention to institutional players steering access to elementary schools as one important dimension of i...

For a long time, Finland stood out in international pupil assessments with a rare combination of excellent overall performance and a high level of equality. However, recent PISA studies point to both deteriorating learning outcomes and increasing importance of pupils’ social background for their learning outcomes in Finland. In addition, strongly i...

Re:Urbia on tutkimus lähiöiden tilasta ja kehityksestä 2020-luvun Suomessa. Hankkeessa analysoidaan lähiöiden moniulotteista segregaatioprosessia muun muassa muuttoliikkeen, koulujen ja lähiöiden veto- ja pitovoiman näkökulmasta ja konseptoidaan uudelleen lähiöiden suunnitteluratkaisuja ja palveluita. Re:Urbia on osa Ympäristöministeriön rahoittama...

Unlike many other types of urban micro‐publics, allotment gardens provide a spatial opportunity for everyday social contact and encounters between heterogeneous user groups who share a common interest. While these micro‐publics have an evidenced capacity for generating social capital, scholars have questioned the extent to which social capital acce...

While several studies have investigated the role of parental school choice in exacerbating school segregation, less attention has been paid to the role of institutional contexts and specific educational policies and regulations. However, since the institutional context sets the framework for both school autonomy regarding the admission process and...

This article takes a nuanced look at the role played by neighbourhood characteristics and local policies in facilitating or limiting the ways in which diversity‐oriented middle‐class families interact and deal with people of lower social classes in mixed‐class inner‐city neighbourhoods. The study draws on interviews and social network analysis cond...

Parents' selective school choices play a key role in exacerbating school segregation across the globe. As a result, numerous studies have investigated parents' choice practices, while less attention has been paid to the role of the institutional context itself. Taking the introduction of free primary school choice in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany...

While the statistical link between residential and school segregation is well-demonstrated, in-depth knowledge of the processes or mediating mechanisms which affect the interconnectedness of the two phenomena is still limited. By focusing on well-functioning schools in disadvantaged neighbourhoods, our article seeks to scrutinise whether reputation...

Housing markets play a decisive role in the spatial distribution of populations and the integration of immigrants. Looking specifically at Germany, shortages of low-rent housing in many cities are proving to be an open door for discrimination. This article looks at the influence institutional housing providers have on migrants’ access to housing. B...

Der Wohnungsmarkt und seine Verteilungsmechanismen sind zentrale Stellschrauben für das Ankommen Zugewanderter in der Gesellschaft und das Gelingen sozialräumlicher Integration. Sie haben maßgeblichen Einfluss auf die räumliche Verteilung der Wohnbevölkerung sowie deren Zusammenleben. Dabei wird die Zugänglichkeit unterschiedlicher Wohnungsmarktseg...

Due to their lack of financial resources, poor residents of deprived neighbourhoods are very much reliant on support and assistance from their personal networks. Studies refer to the key importance of neighbourhood contacts transcending social boundaries to promote upward social mobility. Based on a mix of quantitative and qualitative findings, thi...

In 2008, primary school catchment areas were abolished in the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW)/Germany. Written several years later, this article’s main aim is to provide insights into the impact of the policy reform on parent choice practices and subsequently on educational segregation. Based on a mixed-methods approach, it seeks to u...

Middle-class parents’ strategies of reproduction and social closure and their role as a driver of school segregation are already well-reported. Our two independent research projects in Finland and Germany have additionally revealed a somewhat surprising and not yet fully understood tendency of certain middle-class parents to actively avoid the most...

Within the German education system, primary schools underlie the ideal of a comprehensive and local school. However, this perception is changing: Increasingly, parents are carefully selecting the "right" primary schools for their children, and in some federal states, school catchment areas have been abolished to encourage "responsible competition"...

Das Thema der Bildungsungleichheiten hat in den letzten Jahren zunehmende Aufmerksamkeit in Wissenschaft und Politik erfahren. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen verweisen auf den überdurchschnittlichen Zusammenhang zwischen dem schulischen Erfolg von Kindern und dem sozioökonomischen Status ihrer Eltern in Deutschland, der sich insbesondere an den s...

Based on quantitative data depicting two different, but equally crucial transitions within the educational career of pupils in Athens/Greece1 and Dortmund/Germany,2 the paper focuses on the main social selection processes reproducing educational inequalities in each city. It draws on discussions on education as a mechanism of social reproduction, o...

This article analyses place-specific and common social exclusion patterns and trends in a wide variety of European localities from a comparative case study perspective. The local level is where the interrelationship of multiple factors leading to social exclusion becomes obvious, and at the same time where policies responding to it are most directl...

Um die räumliche Dimension von Armut zu erfassen und vergleichend zu analysieren, ist die Betrachtung möglichst kleinräumiger Daten notwendig. Da europaweit vergleichbare Daten zur Analyse von Armut und sozialer Ausgrenzung jedoch nur unzureichend vorhanden sind, bestand das Ziel des ESPON-Projekts „Territorial Dimension of Poverty and Social Exclu...

The historic district of Porto is suffering from extensive physical and socioeconomic degradation, mainly induced by the housing policy during the dictatorship of Salazar. Despite numerous programmes and projects with the aim to improve the poor housing and social conditions implemented the social and physical degradation could not be solved. This...