‘Notorious Schools’ in ‘Notorious Places’? Exploring the Connectedness of Urban and Educational Segregation

Abstract

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 can be one of the key mediators of the connection between residential and school segregation. Our study combines qualitative ethnographic interviews from four (pre-)primary schools with quantitative segregation measures in four urban neighbourhoods in the Finnish capital city of Helsinki to understand the connections between lived experiences and socio-spatial segregation. The results show that there appears to be a clear link between neighbourhood and school reputation, as schools in disadvantaged neighbourhoods are strongly viewed through the perceptions attached to the place. Despite the case schools’ excellent institutional quality and high overall performance in educational outcomes, there is a consistent pattern of the schools struggling with negative views about the neighbourhoods, which seep into the schools’ reputation. Since school reputation is one of the central drivers of school choices and is also linked to residential choices, the close connection between neighbourhood and school reputation may feed into vicious circles of segregation operating through schools. The results highlight the need for integrated urban policies that are sensitive to issues concerning school reputation and support the confidence and identity of pupils, reaching beyond simply ensuring the institutional quality of schools.

Full text

Social Inclusion (ISSN: 2183–2803)
2021, Volume 9, Issue 2, Pages 154–165
DOI: 10.17645/si.v9i2.3838
Article
‘Notorious Schools’ in ‘Notorious Places’? Exploring the Connectedness of
Urban and Educational Segregation
Venla Bernelius 1,*, Heidi Huilla 2and Isabel Ramos Lobato 1
1Helsinki Institute of Urban and Regional Studies, Department of Geosciences and Geography, University of Helsinki,
00014 Helsinki, Finland; E-Mails: venla.bernelius@helsinki.fi (V.B.), isabel.ramoslobato@helsinki.fi (I.R.L.)
2Department of Educational Sciences, University of Helsinki, 00014 Helsinki, Finland; E-Mail: heidi.huilla@helsinki.fi
* Corresponding author
Submitted: 12 November 2020 | Accepted: 12 January 2021 | Published: 13 May 2021
Abstract
While the statistical link between residential and school segregation is well-demonstrated, in-depth knowledge of the pro-
cesses 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 can be one
of the key mediators of the connection between residential and school segregation. Our study combines qualitative ethno-
graphic interviews from four (pre-)primary schools with quantitative segregation measures in four urban neighbourhoods
in the Finnish capital city of Helsinki to understand the connections between lived experiences and socio-spatial segre-
gation. The results show that there appears to be a clear link between neighbourhood and school reputation, as schools
in disadvantaged neighbourhoods are strongly viewed through the perceptions attached to the place. Despite the case
schools’ excellent institutional quality and high overall performance in educational outcomes, there is a consistent pattern
of the schools struggling with negative views about the neighbourhoods, which seep into the schools’ reputation. Since
school reputation is one of the central drivers of school choices and is also linked to residential choices, the close connec-
tion between neighbourhood and school reputation may feed into vicious circles of segregation operating through schools.
The results highlight the need for integrated urban policies that are sensitive to issues concerning school reputation and
support the confidence and identity of pupils, reaching beyond simply ensuring the institutional quality of schools.
Keywords
educational inequality; Helsinki; image; reputation; residential segregation; school segregation; stigmatisation
Issue
This article is part of the issue “Vicious Circle of Segregation: Understanding the Connectedness of Spatial Inequality
across Generations and Life Domains” edited by Tiit Tammaru (University of Tartu, Estonia), Siiri Silm (University of Tartu,
Estonia), Frank Witlox (Ghent University, Belgium), Maarten van Ham (Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands)
and Madli-Johanna Maidla (University of Tartu, Estonia).
© 2021 by the authors; licensee Cogitatio (Lisbon, Portugal). This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribu-
tion 4.0 International License (CC BY).
1. Introduction
In many European cities, residential segregation is on
the rise (Andersen, 2019; Tammaru, Marcińczak, van
Ham, & Musterd, 2016). At the same time, educational
equality is facing a challenge as school segregation and
widening gaps in educational outcomes have become
marked in many contexts (Boterman, Musterd, Pacchi,
& Ranci, 2019). Segregation in the residential and edu-
cational life contexts, or domains, is tightly interlinked.
While increasing segregation on the neighbourhood lev-
el feeds into the growing differentiation of student com-
position between schools (Bernelius, 2013; Bernelius
& Vaattovaara, 2016; Boterman, 2019), the residen-
tial mobility behaviour of young family households is
increasingly informed by school choice considerations
(Bernelius & Vilkama, 2019; Hamnett & Butler, 2013).
Neighbourhoods with more popular schools attract more
Social Inclusion, 2021, Volume 9, Issue 2, Pages 154–165 154

middle-class residents, while some neighbourhoods are
rejected partly because of concerns related to schools.
However, while the statistical link between residential
and school segregation is well demonstrated (Boterman
et al., 2019; Frankenberg, 2013), in-depth knowledge
of the underlying processes or mediating mechanisms
which affect the interconnectedness of the two phenom-
ena is still limited.
By focusing on well-functioning schools in disadvan-
taged neighbourhoods, our article seeks to scrutinise
whether reputation can be a crucial mediator of the con-
nection between residential and school segregation, feed-
ing into a multi-domain vicious circle of segregation (van
Ham, Tammaru, & Janssen, 2018). The main aim of our
study is to explore the interconnections between urban
segregation and the reputations of schools and neigh-
bourhoods. We ask how perceptions of local schools are
linked to urban segregation and problems of neighbour-
hood stigmatisation. To what extent do these perceptions
relate to objective characteristics of schools and neigh-
bourhoods and how are they experienced by students,
parents and teachers? In short, if disadvantaged places
are labelled ‘notorious’ (Kearns, Kearns, & Lawson, 2013),
will schools also be seen as such?
The study combines qualitative ethnographic inter-
views from four (pre-)primary schools with quantita-
tive segregation measures in four urban neighbourhoods
in the Finnish capital Helsinki. In contrast to previous
research on school reputation, the combination of quan-
titative and qualitative data allows us to contrast pupils,’
parents’, and school staffs’ subjective perceptions of
school and neighbourhood reputations with objective,
quantitative segregation measures. Through the con-
stant dialogue between the two datasets, the everyday
experiences in schools and neighbourhoods can thus be
contextualised in place.
Our conceptual framework mainly draws on the con-
cepts of reputation, image, and stigma elaborated by
Kearns et al. (2013) in their study on ‘notorious’ places in
the UK. We use these concepts to interpret how pupils,
families, and school staff express their views and experi-
ences of their neighbourhoods and schools and position
themselves concerning their own communities and out-
siders. Particularly, the differentiation between personal
beliefs and meta-beliefs, referred to as reputation, allows
for a better understanding of how values are attached to
both neighbourhoods and schools and how these values
are socially reproduced.
Helsinki is an ideal location to study the relation-
ship between neighbourhood and school characteristics.
As the local educational system consists mainly of local
public schools with individual catchment areas, the inter-
connections between neighbourhood and school alloca-
tion are very strong. Public funding and a shared cur-
riculum make institutional variation between schools low
in international comparison. Based on egalitarian ide-
als, the municipal educational authority seeks to ensure
equal academic institutional quality in all schools and
ranking lists are not published. It can therefore be argued
that school reputation is less dependent on institutional
variation than in more differentiated education systems
which, for instance, rely more on private schools with
strong school competition and varying institutional qual-
ities. This local context thus allows revealing effects that
are almost exclusively tied to the social (re)production of
reputation through the composition of both schools and
neighbourhoods. Since rumours and reputations play a
significant role for parents’ school choices even in edu-
cation systems with official league tables and in which
the variation between the institutional quality of schools
is higher (Butler & Hamnett, 2007; Vincent, Braun, &
Ball, 2010), this study provides an understanding that
can likely be transferred to systems with more institution-
al variation.
So far, several studies have demonstrated that school
segregation is to a large extent the effect of residential
patterns (Boterman, 2019; Frankenberg, 2013). However,
the former is not just a simple reflection of the latter;
their connection is rather exacerbated by several differ-
ent processes (Candipan, 2019; Oberti & Savina, 2019).
Since the relationship between residential and school
segregation is crucial to understand intergenerational
social mobility and inequality (Boterman et al., 2019),
the topic is of high educational and socio-political rel-
evance. Based on a conceptual design combining both
quantitative and qualitative empirical data, our study
allows us to gain a better theoretical understanding of
the mechanisms by which urban segregation affects the
widening gaps in educational attainment between urban
communities. Identifying these mechanisms is central to
finding novel ways to support schools and communities
in urban neighbourhoods throughout Europe.
2. Local Geographies of Education: The Close
Relationship between Residential and School
Segregation
Research across many countries illustrates that residen-
tial segregation and school segregation are tightly inter-
linked in a ‘geography of education’ (Butler & Hamnett,
2007). However, while high levels of residential segre-
gation are usually accompanied by segregated schools,
low levels of residential segregation do not necessarily
result in mixed schools. In contrast, school segregation
is usually higher than residential segregation, which is
mainly due to parents’ socially selective ways of choosing
schools (Boterman et al., 2019; Ramos Lobato & Groos,
2019; Wilson & Bridge, 2019).
Access to high-quality education has become a
sensitive topic for many parents (Butler & Hamnett,
2007). Especially middle-class parents, equipped with
the social and cultural capital needed to take full advan-
tage of the educational market, actively navigate the sys-
tem to find the ‘right’ schools (Boterman et al., 2019;
Kosunen, 2014). Concerned about their children’s expo-
sure to lower standards of education, to children with
Social Inclusion, 2021, Volume 9, Issue 2, Pages 154–165 155

inadequate language skills or the ‘wrong’ types of social-
isation, many parents tend to define the ‘right’ school
based on its social, racial or ethnic composition—which
feeds into growing school polarisation (Boterman, 2013;
Ramos Lobato & Groos, 2019; Vowden, 2012; Wilson &
Bridge, 2019).
Parents’ school choices are strongly influenced
by their local social networks (Ramos Lobato, 2019;
van Zanten, 2013; Vincent et al., 2010; Vowden, 2012).
Personal impressions and the experiences of friends
or relatives—so-called ‘grapevine-knowledge’ (Ball &
Vincent, 1998)—are often used to compensate for miss-
ing or untrustworthy official information. Since parents’
networks spread (middle-class) parents’ personal opin-
ions about ‘good’ or ‘bad’ schools rather than provide
objective information, they do not only transfer but
actively construct reputations of ‘good’ schools (Holme,
2002; Kosunen, 2014). As grapevine knowledge also pro-
vides a medium for social comparison (Ball & Vincent,
1998), schools’ reputations play a significant role in shap-
ing parents’ choice strategies.
3. Vicious Circles of Segregation: The Relationship
between Neighbourhood and School Reputation
3.1. Conceptualisation of Image, Reputation, and Stigma
Based on the conceptualisations of image, reputation,
and stigma by Kearns et al. (2013), we define image as
a personal belief or evaluation about schools and neigh-
bourhoods. Reputation, in contrast, is a meta-belief; a
belief about what is commonly believed about a par-
ticular object, which does not necessarily reflect the
speaker’s own view (Kearns et al., 2013). The way in
which personal opinions are transformed into social-
ly accepted perception or reputation is based on two
mechanisms: First, through institutional actors, who can
spread their views publicly—such as local newspapers
(Butler, Schafran, & Carpenter, 2008; Kearns et al., 2013;
Permentier, van Ham, & Bolt, 2008) and second, uninten-
tionally, through the residents themselves (Butler et al.,
2018; Pinkster & Hoekstra, 2020).
While both image and reputation can be posi-
tive or negative, stigma carries solely negative conno-
tations. According to Goffman (1963), stigma is the
classification—and the subsequent discrimination, exclu-
sion, rejection and devaluation—of individuals as ‘dis-
credited’ based on the possession of symbolic and/or
physical attributes. The symbolic dimension of stigma is
especially crucial since it emphasises the stigma’s “struc-
tural roots in broader patterns of power and its role in
legitimising social inequality in society” (Kearns et al.,
2013, p. 582). As stigma is understood as an intrinsic
part of the stigmatised individual—even though it is just
attached to a person by others—those who have been
stigmatised have less power to change the stigma but
rather tend to make it a part of their own identity (Bunar,
2011; Kearns et al., 2013).
With his concept of territorial stigmatisation,
Wacquant (2007) adds place as an additional and partial-
ly autonomised dimension of social discredit. Territorial
stigmatisation affects not only the residents but also the
level and quality of service delivery, the area’s symbol-
ic representation by journalists, and scholars, and the
beliefs and decisions of state officials and their public
policies (Wacquant, Slater, & Pereira, 2014).
3.2. Notorious Schools in Notorious Neighbourhoods?
In the case of a bad reputation, most residents or pupils
are aware of their neighbourhood’s or school’s negative
reputation, the stereotypes associated with it, and the
position of such schools and neighbourhoods in the local
hierarchy (Hollingworth & Archer, 2010; Kearns et al.,
2013; Kosunen & Carrasco, 2016). A noticeable body of
research shows that objective characteristics seem to
be good predictors for both neighbourhood and school
reputation (Boterman et al., 2019; Kearns et al., 2013;
Kosunen, 2014; Permentier et al., 2008)—with schools’
educational quality as one important exception to the
rule. As parents tend to associate a school’s educational
quality with its social, racial or ethnic composition rather
than its institutional quality (Boterman, 2013; Vowden,
2012), there are schools with bad reputations despite
parents’ positive experiences, and their good perfor-
mance (Bernelius, 2013; Kosunen, 2014). To understand
the source of this bad reputation, it is thus not sufficient
to pay attention to objective or institutional character-
istics, but rather to the schools’ interrelations with the
neighbourhood and their position in the social and sym-
bolic local hierarchy (Bunar, 2011).
So far, there is only limited information about the
social processes by which school and neighbourhood
reputations are discursively constructed. Certain schools
seem to become stigmatised via a complex interconnec-
tion of material conditions, educational outcomes (e.g.,
league tables) and neighbourhood reputation (Bunar,
2011), although the impact of the latter does not seem
to be so straightforward (Hollingworth & Archer, 2010).
Schools’ reputations seem to be connected to their rel-
ative position in the local educational hierarchy (Bunar,
2011; Kosunen, 2014); however, how this hierarchy is
connected to socio-spatial characteristics has not yet
been studied.
In numerous cities, residential and school seg-
regation are two strongly interrelated phenomena
(Bonal, Zancajo, & Scandurra, 2019; Boterman, 2019;
Frankenberg, 2013; Oberti & Savina, 2019). Regarding
the underlying mechanisms of this relationship, we ask
whether reputation might be one of the key elements
to understanding this strong connection. So far, there
are no previous studies in the Finnish and internation-
al context where school and neighbourhood reputa-
tions have been studied together, or directly connect-
ed to quantitative measures of neighbourhood segre-
gation in a single research setting. In this article, we
Social Inclusion, 2021, Volume 9, Issue 2, Pages 154–165 156

thus seek to explore reputation and stigma as a poten-
tial link between urban and school segregation, feeding
into vicious circles of segregation. We ask to what extent
neighbourhoods’ and schools’ reputations are related to
objective characteristics and how they are experienced
by students, parents, and teachers. Our mixed-methods
approach allows us to analyse both how subjective val-
ues are attached to neighbourhoods and schools and
how these are connected to quantitative measures of
neighbourhood segregation and thus fill the knowledge
gap in research.
4. Methodology
To capture the interrelationship between neighbour-
hood and school segregation and reputations, we com-
bine two sets of data in a common analytical frame-
work: quantitative GIS-data to analyse the socio-spatial
structure of the school catchment areas, and qualitative
ethnographic interview data from two related research
projects: “Well-Functioning Local Schools” (2014–2015)
and the “Mixed Classes and Pedagogical Solutions
MAPS’’ (2018–2021).
The quantitative data consist of Statistics Finland
Grid Database (250 m grid-cell data) on block-level socio-
economic indicators for the years 1999–2019 with addi-
tional information on registered languages of residents
for 2012. In the quantitative analysis, we modelled socio-
spatial segregation in school catchment areas by aggre-
gating block-level urban statistical data into the catch-
ment area level, producing a segregation analysis of all
primary school catchment areas in Helsinki. Our analy-
sis extended over several years to check for consistency
in the spatial development trajectories. The analysis soft-
ware was MapInfo and QGIS, combined with SPSS for sta-
tistical analysis.
The case schools were selected based on the catch-
ment area segregation analysis, school characteristics,
and educational outcomes from 2012. The education-
al outcomes assessments have been carried out by
the National Board of Education, and the institution-
al academic quality of the schools by the Helsinki City
Education Council with the criteria of well-functioning
school leadership, high teacher satisfaction, and low
staff turnover. We selected schools, which are located in
mixed or disadvantaged neighbourhoods but have been
assessed to achieve good educational outcomes and to
be of excellent academic quality. As previous research
has demonstrated (Bernelius, 2013), the schools’ edu-
cational outcomes are usually highly correlated with
the socio-economic status of the catchment area in
Helsinki. We searched for schools, which perform excep-
tionally well and exceed the outcomes which would
have been statistically expected based on the catch-
ment area’s socio-economic composition. The final selec-
tion criteria were (1) a high level of local and relation-
al socio-economic disadvantage in the school catchment
area and, simultaneously, (2) educational outcomes that
exceeded the level statistically associated with the quan-
titative measures of local disadvantage.
The qualitative data consist of ethnographic inter-
views that were conducted in four selected neighbour-
hoods and pre-/primary schools. Ethnographic inter-
views mean that they were conducted in projects in
which the relationships between the researcher and the
interviewees were established during longer observa-
tion periods within the schools. Thus, the duration and
frequency of contacts with the interviewees distinguish
them from interviews that are set up only for that pur-
pose (Heyl, 2007). The overall qualitative ethnograph-
ic data were collected in the two research projects and
include both field notes from observations in schools and
ethnographic interviews (n = 125) with pupils, their par-
ents, and schools’ staff. For this study, we limited the
analysis to the latter, in which the topic of reputation was
explicitly dealt with.
In all schools, we interviewed the staff volunteer-
ing to participate (n =47) during the observation peri-
ods. This included teachers, school leaders, and other
professional personnel. The interviewed pupils (n =51)
were fifth- and sixth-graders (11–13 years of age). In
Finland, children start their obligatory educational paths
when they enter pre-primary school at age five or
six. Pre-primary education in this study was organ-
ised on the same premises and in close co-operation
with primary school. Since the interviewed pupils were
about to enter lower-secondary education, which starts
at age twelve or thirteen, we discussed their experi-
ences of both primary school and the transition phase.
In Helsinki, pupils are mainly allocated to their near-
est lower-secondary school; however, they can apply
to other lower-secondary schools. The group of parents
(n =27) included the parents of the interviewed pupils
and several pre-primary school pupils, whom we contact-
ed at parents’ evenings. All interviews lasted between 30
and 90 minutes and were recorded and transcribed. All
Finnish quotes in this article were translated into English.
In the interviews, we talked about the interviewees’
perception and experiences of the schools and neigh-
bourhoods. In the analysis, we first utilised coding in
Atlas.ti software as a means to organise the extensive
dataset and then moved on to inductive thematic con-
tent analysis (Schreier, 2012). At first, we coded talk
about school(s) and neighbourhood(s) concentrating par-
ticularly on how they were described in the interviews
and in relation to other schools and neighbourhoods.
Next, we coded the data excerpts by using ‘reputation,’
‘image’ and ‘stigma’ as codes generated deductively
from our conceptual framework. Afterwards, we moved
on to the inductive thematic content analysis to cap-
ture the formulations used by the interviewees them-
selves. To differentiate between reputation and stigma,
we understand stigma as a negative reputation that has
already been internalised by an individual, which points
to the underlying unequal power relations and their
structural roots (Bunar, 2011; Kearns et al., 2013).
Social Inclusion, 2021, Volume 9, Issue 2, Pages 154–165 157

The quantitative analysis was combined with the
qualitative analysis in two ways: First, we used the quanti-
tative data to analyse socio-spatial patterns in the school
catchment areas to find suitable areas and schools for
case studies. Secondly, we contrasted and contextualised
the qualitative findings with the segregation patterns
to understand the relationship between socio-spatially
structured segregation and the individual interpretations
of places and their images and reputations. The research
findings are thus based on a mutually complementary
dialogue between the structural quantitative analysis
and ethnographic interview data to examine, for exam-
ple, the importance of a school’s or neighbourhood’s rel-
ative position in the city to produce a certain reputation.
5. Geography of the Case Study Schools
Our four case schools are called here by their
pseudonyms Thyme, Caraway, Pimento, and Rosemary.
They have all been assessed by the education author-
ities to have excellent school leadership, low teacher
turnover, high parental satisfaction, and good educa-
tional outcomes. Based on these institutional factors
and educational performance, school reputation should
not be negatively biased by any characteristics related
to the institutional quality of the schools.
Caraway, Pimento, and Rosemary are all located in
the larger district of East Helsinki. East Helsinki has a
strong, rather stigmatised reputation as the ‘notorious’
part of the city, where most neighbourhoods are clear-
ly more disadvantaged than the city average. In the
national media, East Helsinki has become almost synony-
mous to urban disadvantage and segregation, although
there is internal variance in the socio-economic status
of the different neighbourhoods in the eastern parts of
the city.
According to their catchment area characteristics,
Caraway, Pimento, and Rosemary share a distinct disad-
vantage concerning the city averages in income, unem-
ployment, and share of residents with Master’s-level
education (Figure 1). The catchment areas are also
among the ones with the highest local share of resi-
dents with a foreign mother tongue. Other available
socio-economic indicators demonstrate the same disad-
vantaged status: The share of adults with only basic edu-
cation is distinctly higher in the selected areas than in
the city in general, and cramped housing conditions are
more common. According to the longitudinal observa-
tions of all catchment areas, the neighbourhoods’ rela-
tive disadvantage has deep roots. While segregation has
increased between the catchment areas from 1999 to
2019, the relative position of these catchment areas has
remained in the lowest quartile of the city. Previous stud-
ies in Helsinki have highlighted the risk of vicious cir-
cles of segregation in these types of catchment areas,
as many of them are avoided in residential decisions or
they experience a migration loss of middle-class families
(Bernelius, 2013; Bernelius & Vilkama, 2019).
In contrast, Thyme’s catchment area is close to the
city average by all its socio-economic indicators (see
Figure 1). However, while the other schools are all sur-
rounded by catchment areas that are relatively simi-
lar to each other, the Thyme catchment area is locat-
ed relatively close to the city centre, between well-off
areas in Helsinki. Through Thyme, it is thus possible to
explore the meaning of relative local disadvantage and
the effect of local hierarchies on school and neighbour-
hood reputation.
40
35
30
25
15
10
5
0
Helsinki Thyme Caraway Pimento Rosemary
20
Income (thousands) Income (thousands) Unemployment Foreign language
Figure 1. Socio-economic characteristics of all school catchment areas (Helsinki, average) and the case study school catch-
ment areas: Average yearly income (thousands) and share of residents with master’s-level tertiary education, share of
unemployed residents and residents with a foreign mother tongue (other than Finnish, Swedish or Samí) in 2016–2018.
Social Inclusion, 2021, Volume 9, Issue 2, Pages 154–165 158

6. Image, Reputation, and Stigma: The Complex
Relationship between Schools and Neighbourhoods
6.1. Place-Based Stigma and Real-Life Consequences
Caraway, Pimento, and Rosemary are all located in East
Helsinki. While the socio-spatial characteristics of their
catchment areas show quite similar patterns of socio-
economic deprivation and higher-than-average shares of
ethnic minorities, the interviews, in contrast, illustrate
multidimensional aspects affecting images, reputations,
and stigmas (Kearns et al., 2013).
Among them, Caraway differs regarding its shared
positive self-image that covers both the neighbourhood
and the school. School and neighbourhood images are
connected strongly, and this connection is intentional-
ly maintained. The school staff describes the school in
a consistently positive way. Both staff and parents are
proud of the school’s place-related roots and traditions,
which are used in the identity building of pupils as the fol-
lowing teacher’s quote illustrates: “You can see Caraway
in these children. It is a certain pride for many that they
are from Caraway; you certainly don’t have to hide it.”
One aspect that is important to mention is that many
of the staff members live in the neighbourhood as well.
Along with the parents, they applaud the diversity and
social mix of the neighbourhood and the school. Pupils
in Caraway describe their neighbourhood similarly pos-
itively; most of them can even imagine staying there
as adults.
The other two East Helsinki schools, Rosemary and
Pimento, have good images as well; however, they need
to maintain them despite the neighbourhoods, which
are mostly talked about in a negative way. Even though
Caraway’s school catchment area characteristics are
like those of Rosemary’s or Pimento’s, the relationship
between the school and the neighbourhood differs signif-
icantly. In Rosemary and Pimento, the interviewed staff,
none of whom live in the neighbourhoods, describes
them through social problems. This talk relates to the
existence of “problematic” places in the neighbourhoods,
including local public transport stations, which general-
ly tend to gather problematic phenomena in Helsinki,
such as substance abuse. Similar patterns can be found
in pupils’ interviews, which mention difficulties in find-
ing positive comments about their neighbourhoods and
rather describe incidents with intoxicated adults, even
harassment, as one of the sixth graders illustrates:
I’ll tell you a story. When my sister was in
Pimento…there was this woman she didn’t
know…she said to [my sister] that she will burn
her hair and kill her when she sees her the next
time….The woman chased her, and our dad called
the police.…I’m afraid to go to Pimento nowadays.
Even though these problems are not related at all to
the quality of the schools, they seem to directly seep
into them and consequently, to impact the schools’
reputation. How strongly doubts about the quality of
schools are shaped by the neighbourhoods’ overall bad
reputation is illustrated by the following quote. When
asked about the school’s reputation, one parent explic-
itly states: “Mostly that it is located [in Rosemary’s
neighbourhood], and then people already start thinking
whether it’s a good school.” Hence, a reputation as a bad
place is powerful enough to socially construct schools
as notorious regardless of their actual quality (see also
Bunar, 2011). In order to prove themselves to be bet-
ter than outsiders’ expectations, school reputations are
often deliberately constructed and maintained against
other schools within the area. Because of these local
comparisons, it may be difficult for all schools in these
neighbourhoods to be perceived as ‘good’, because the
problems that are attached to the neighbourhoods’ stig-
ma need to be located somewhere in the local discourse.
Consequently, the socially constructed relative positions
of schools in the local educational hierarchies become
important, which we will refer to in more detail.
While staff members talk a lot about problems, they
also made clear that they believe they are doing a good
job, that the schools’ everyday life functions well and the
atmosphere is said to be better than in some schools
with an “easier” pupil composition. The staff’s percep-
tion or image of the schools is an overall positive one—
despite the difficulties they may experience due to the
neighbourhoods, as the next quote illustrates:
Interviewer: How would you describe this place to
someone who doesn’t know it?
Teacher: Nice people, everything works well, not at all
like, like I had the impression, of course…when I came
here to Pimento school what it must be like, but the
image is much more positive now.
The quote illustrates how image and reputation differ.
This teacher heard about the Pimento neighbourhood’s
reputation before s/he first entered the school and there-
fore had doubts about the school’s quality. Nevertheless,
s/he ended up working there and now perceives the
school from a different viewpoint.
The ‘notoriousness’ of East Helsinki creates another
layer in the place-based problems of the schools. Not
even Caraway, which manages to positively connect the
school and the neighbourhood, can ignore the stigma
attached to East Helsinki. ‘East Helsinki’ as a term is
referred to several times in the interviews. However,
‘East Helsinki’ does not only or mainly refer to a certain
area or place; rather, it is used as an attribute describ-
ing something challenging either in the schools or in the
schools’ reputations.
The stigmatised position of East Helsinki and thus the
schools located in it becomes obvious in the interviews
when the interviewees themselves use this stigmatisa-
tion as a self-explanatory concept when they describe
Social Inclusion, 2021, Volume 9, Issue 2, Pages 154–165 159

(potential) problems. This is visible in the following teach-
er’s quote where s/he describes teaching: “And it’s prob-
ably more challenging and more difficult and takes more
time in an East Helsinki school than somewhere else.”
In the quote, East Helsinki is used as a synonym for a chal-
lenging school and potential failures. The interviewee
even treats this as common sense so that the interview-
er is expected to understand why something is “more dif-
ficult” in an “East Helsinki school.” This self-explanatory
concept is internalised as the teachers believe them-
selves to be in challenging circumstances due to the
school’s location. This stigmatised position also becomes
visible in parents’ frustrated comments about being tired
of the talk related to East Helsinki:
Interviewer: Were [things that outsiders find suspi-
cious] suspicious to you?
Parent: No. I think, East Helsinki is pretty peaceful,
even if many say otherwise, but it’s [fine].
Since all schools in this sample are doing well in terms of
their educational outcomes, it might be argued that the
neighbourhoods’ bad reputation and stigmatised posi-
tion remain on a symbolic level. However, the interviews
illustrate that these symbolic meanings have real-life con-
sequences for the schools. First, even if the principals say
that their schools are popular among job applicants who
are familiar with East Helsinki schools, there are, never-
theless, place-related problems concerning recruitment,
as this principal puts it:
This school has had a reputation as a good school,
but geography plays a role here, because even though
this school has much better social networks than
many schools in the [city] centre, we have to try to
sell the school when we recruit.
A second consequence becomes apparent in talks about
school choice. An example shows how Rosemary pupils
fear that they may end up in their nearest lower-
secondary school, Dandelion. Teachers and parents rec-
ommend pupils to apply to “higher-level” schools and
talk proudly about pupils who have “succeeded in getting
into better schools.” In the following discussion, sixth-
graders talk about their choices:
Pupil 1: [Dandelion has a] really bad [reputation].
Interviewer: Do adults also talk about it somehow?
Pupil 2: Some parents do, our friend said that…she
won’t come to Dandelion because her mother won’t
let her. You know that schools are given scores or
something. Dandelion got six, like a really bad score,
that’s why she’s not coming to that school. It’s only
because there are some foreign pupils…everyone
says that Dandelion is a very bad school.
Pupil 1: Everyone who goes to Dandelion will end up
smoking and stuff.
Pupil 2: And my sister’s friend…said that…you can’t
get a proper education or [a proper] job afterwards.
The discussion shows how reputations enhance the self-
perpetuating circle of neighbourhood and school seg-
regation (Bernelius & Vilkama, 2019; Kosunen, 2014).
Pupils and parents stress about the transition phase, and
the reasoning for their choices appears quite random
since there are no public rankings, for instance. Stigmas
become visible in everyday discussions and are manifest
in the choices of those who can choose. The example
also shows signs of inferior educational opportunities in
Helsinki. If people think that some schools are unable
to offer “proper education and work,” this might label
pupils in those schools regardless of the actual quality of
the school (Bunar, 2011).
A third example follows Hollingworth and Archer’s
(2010) findings showing that the pupils’ location with-
in ‘pathologised’ places decreases some pupils’ confi-
dence in their own abilities. We found similar patterns
in our data. Since pupils seem to have internalised
the stigma attached to certain places, teachers in East
Helsinki schools need to build up confidence in their
pupils for them to learn, as the following teacher’s
quote illustrates:
Despite [others’] expectations, we need to drag these
children to the level in which they themselves get
to decide how they want to continue….So that they
would themselves see ‘I can do this.’ Sometimes it’s
very challenging. The trust that ‘I can do something’
is missing completely….Raising one’s self-esteem is
important here.
Despite their similar socio-economic position, these con-
sequences are more apparent in Rosemary and Pimento
than in Caraway, which highlights the importance of fur-
ther studying the nuances of how image and reputation
affect schools and places. In Caraway, the positive con-
nection between the neighbourhood and the school with
its long roots and intentionally maintained traditions
appears to soften some of the negative consequences
attached to its location in the ‘notorious’ East Helsinki,
of which Rosemary and Pimento suffer from. Also, the
fact that several Caraway staff members live in the same
neighbourhood, while none of the interviewed members
in the case of Rosemary and Pimento do, might facilitate
to identify with the neighbourhood for the former and to
distance themselves for the latter.
6.2. Local Hierarchies and the Relativity of Reputation
Unlike the other schools in this study, Thyme school
is mostly affected by its relative position in the local
hierarchies. The school and the neighbourhood suffer
Social Inclusion, 2021, Volume 9, Issue 2, Pages 154–165 160

from a bad reputation or even stigma, as the social-
ly mixed neighbourhood stands out in comparison to
the prestigious, middle-class neighbourhoods that sur-
round Thyme. The stigma appears to relate especial-
ly to racialised ethnic minorities, while the neighbour-
ing areas are described as “white.” The quantitative
analysis shows that regarding its social structure, Thyme
neighbourhood, in fact, follows the city average closely.
Socioeconomic indicators are neither particularly low,
nor does its ethnic composition differ. Thereby, Thyme
provides an example of how the relative position is social-
ly constructed (Bunar, 2011; Kosunen, 2014; Kosunen &
Carrasco, 2016) and how the symbolic representation
matters (Wacquant et al., 2014).
The interviews demonstrate a positive self-image in
the Thyme neighbourhood. Nevertheless, the school is
rejected in school choices and stigmatised in public dis-
course. People living in the neighbourhood and working
in the school are aware of this, and comment on it in the
interviews, as this parent does:
Good connections and all, I don’t see any reason why
this should…have a bad reputation, but evidently, if
you follow [public discourse], the reputation is very
bad. Because there are so many people with immi-
grant backgrounds, but I don’t know, I think this is a
nice area.
Racialised ethnic minorities are a crucial element of both
the Thyme school and the neighbourhood reputations.
According to the interviewees, “immigrants” are the rea-
son why outsiders have doubts about it. This seems to
force people to comment on the subject even if they do
not see it as a problem, in other words, even if it does not
relate to their image of the neighbourhood. The some-
times even striking opinions that outsiders have about
the Thyme neighbourhood seem to be related to their
perceptions of the school, as the next quote by a teach-
er shows:
I was at a [celebration] at [a nearby neighbourhood
school] and behind me sat someone…who started
talking…about the possibility of her child being forced
to go to Thyme [instead of the other neighbourhood’s
school], and [she said] that Thyme [school] is “terri-
bly bad”…and the principal horrible and [she used]
extremely vulgar [language].
We interpret this as another example of how strong-
ly school and neighbourhood reputations are connect-
ed. While Thyme neighbourhood has a good image
among the people living there, those people living in
the surrounding neighbourhoods rather demonise it.
Interviewees give several examples of this. However,
when referring to Thyme as a “bad” neighbourhood, they
mainly do that in discussions that relate to the schools
in Thyme. We thus argue that the ‘need’ for outsiders
to have an opinion about Thyme emerges, or at least
increases, as soon as their children start their school
paths. Thus, while we previously showed how the neigh-
bourhoods’ bad reputation seeps into schools, it seems
that this relationship might also work the other way
around. Schools can thus also be a crucial element in the
production of a neighbourhood’s reputation.
The neighbourhood’s low relative position and its
connection to the school seem to affect how staff
encounters pupils. Some of the interviewees refer to
the deficit perceptions and limited expectations some of
their colleagues have about the pupils at Thyme school.
These teachers believe that they cannot expect similar
performances from their pupils as they could in schools
in more well off areas, even though Thyme neighbour-
hood is not particularly low in socioeconomic terms.
We interpret this as an additional sign of the school’s
stigmatised position since it illustrates that the staff has
already internalised external beliefs about the ‘problem-
atic’ school (see Kearns et al., 2013).
This internalisation has at least two types of real-
life consequences. First, as the school staff has (partial-
ly) internalised that the pupil composition is too diffi-
cult to succeed with, it might play a part in maintaining
the bad reputation of the school. Second, the school’s
stigmatised position creates anxiety in the interviewed
preschool parents, whose children’s school paths lead to
Thyme unless they make other intentional choices. In the
quote below, a parent who described herself to be high-
ly active in the neighbourhood and said she was fighting
back against the bad talk about the area, discusses the
difficulties in deciding what stand to take on the negative
reputation of the school:
Parent: And since we have had the possibility to think
about another school. And because of all the contra-
dicting [opinions], some are like, ‘this is a horrible
school.’
Interviewer: What is it related to?
Parent: Bullying and, well, immigrants….I can’t really
tell, people’s prejudices affect these things so much
that they interpret things that have happened in
their own way…of course, I’ve been thinking about
whether they are right [in that the school is bad].
Among all interviewees, some actively wish to chal-
lenge the negative perceptions of the neighbourhoods
or schools. Changing a bad reputation, especially a stig-
matised position, is, however, difficult as it tends to
become internalised and relates to larger social issues.
Underlying structural issues, such as racism, are difficult
to challenge by schools or neighbourhood communities.
7. Conclusion
Previous research has shown how closely the domains of
neighbourhood and school segregation are connected.
Social Inclusion, 2021, Volume 9, Issue 2, Pages 154–165 161

Our school interviews—interpreted in dialogue with
socio-spatial segregation analysis—offer additional
insights into reputation as a mechanism mediating the
connection between these two domains. There appears
to be a strong link between neighbourhood and school
reputation, as schools in disadvantaged neighbourhoods
are viewed through the perceptions attached to the
place. The same processes feeding into places becom-
ing ‘notorious,’ as conceptualised by Kearns et al. (2013),
also brand the schools as the ‘notorious schools’ of
the ‘notorious places’ (Bunar, 2011). Despite the case
schools’ excellent institutional quality and high overall
performance in educational outcomes, there is a con-
sistent pattern of the schools struggling with negative
neighbourhood reputations and prejudices. This direct-
ly seeps into the school’s own negative reputation—a
relationship that can be interpreted through the lens of
‘territorial stigmatisation’ (Wacquant, 2007). How close-
ly school and neighbourhood reputations are interlinked
becomes evident for example in an interview with a local
parent, who feels that outsiders immediately assess the
school as bad simply because it is located within that
neighbourhood. At the same time, schools might be the
trigger creating a need for families to evaluate the neigh-
bourhood, as it appears to be in Thyme. By highlighting
this territorial link, our research confirms previous stud-
ies and assumptions defending that the doubts about
school quality are most often not related to the school’s
supposedly inadequate quality of education, but rather
to social aspects of school segregation (Bunar, 2011;
Kosunen, 2014).
The study also demonstrates how neighbourhood
and school reputations are constructed in relation to
complex local and regional hierarchies (see also Kosunen,
2014). Three of our case schools are located in a rel-
atively homogenous part of the city, where most of
the neighbouring areas face similar socio-economic chal-
lenges. Their shared negative reputation is consistent
with the general stigmatisation of Eastern Helsinki and
its disadvantage in terms of poverty and perceived social
problems. The national and local discourse, in which
East Helsinki has nearly become a synonym for disad-
vantage and failure, seems difficult to overcome in edu-
cation. In this sense, the schools’ negative reputation
is constructed through the neighbourhood reputation,
and in relation a city-wide hierarchy of neighbourhoods.
Nevertheless, even in this rather homogenous area, rela-
tive positions of schools can be identified. The parents’
and staff members’ positive perspective on the neigh-
bourhood and the Caraway school’s long tradition in
the neighbourhood might enable to withdraw from neg-
ative reputations and to draw counter-narratives and
a more positive self-image and reputation about the
school. These fine-grained and rather complex differ-
ences also highlight the need for further studies on the
underlying mechanisms of local social hierarchies.
The significance of the relative position of schools
and neighbourhoods becomes particularly visible in the
case of our fourth case school, Thyme. In contrast to the
three other schools, Thyme has a catchment area with
a social status close to the city average. At the same
time, it is wedged between areas with high status and
a long history of social prestige. Despite the school’s
excellent educational outcomes and its close-to-average
socio-economic composition, the subjective perception
of disadvantage is constructed in relation to the neigh-
bouring catchment areas and schools, which became evi-
dent in the way school staff and parents talked about the
interlinked poor reputation of the neighbourhood and
school. Thus, while the East Helsinki schools and catch-
ment areas seem to be mostly evaluated and contrasted
against the rest of the city, Thyme’s reputation appears
to be constructed on a smaller scale in relation to its
immediate surroundings.
Like previous research showing that residents eval-
uate their neighbourhood significantly more positively
than non-residents (Permentier et al., 2008), our inter-
views highlight the differences between the personal
experiences with these schools and the perceived per-
spectives from outside. The conceptual framework of
image and reputation helps to distinguish between the
insider and outsider perspective and to understand why
reputations easily become internalised as ‘beliefs about
beliefs.’ In all case schools, most pupils, parents, and staff
are satisfied with their school; however, at the same
time, they are very strongly aware of, and sensitive to,
the perceived negative views from outside, and how this
reputation affects the outsiders’ prejudices against the
local school. Consequently, these socially constructed
symbolic distinctions have real-life effects for the school
communities and pupils. The stigmatisation of schools
and neighbourhoods is felt by the teachers, who raise
concerns about the load and fatigue caused by negative
assumptions about the school and impairs the pupils’
self-image and confidence. In some schools, pupils are
worried about the effect that the school reputation may
have on their future. In these discourses, places and
schools are even used as self-explanatory phrases—“It’s
difficult to do that in an East Helsinki school”—creating
self-fulfilling prophecies.
The results highlight, for their part, the interconnect-
edness of multiple domains of segregation, and the fruit-
fulness of studying these in a common setting to unearth
some of the mediating mechanisms. The observed con-
nection between neighbourhood and school reputation
and their link to segregation provides both challenges
and possibilities for educational and urban policies.
On the one hand, this connection demonstrates how
and why even an egalitarian, high-quality educational
system is not automatically protected against vicious cir-
cles of educational segregation in disadvantaged neigh-
bourhoods. As reputation is one of the central drivers
of school choices, negative perceptions of schools and
neighbourhoods likely affect their rejection as middle-
class parents are especially sensitive to fears of choosing
the ‘wrong’ kind of school for their children (Boterman,
Social Inclusion, 2021, Volume 9, Issue 2, Pages 154–165 162

2013; Ramos Lobato, Bernelius, & Kosunen, 2018; Ramos
Lobato & Groos, 2019; Vowden, 2012). In this process,
even institutionally well-functioning schools also appear
to be vulnerable to the self-perpetuating growth of
school segregation if they are located in a stigmatised
neighbourhood. School reputation is also closely linked
to residential choices. The interlinked process of stigma-
tisation of neighbourhoods and schools may thus feed
into a multi-domain circle of segregation, where seg-
regation in one domain feeds into the other. The risk
of circles of deprivation may be even more profound
in contexts where the institutional quality of schools
varies more and school choice policies are more liber-
al. In less egalitarian and more differentiated education-
al systems, where inequalities between different social
and ethnic or racial groups are bigger, such as the UK
or US, or where schools partly rely on additional finan-
cial support by parents, or are characterised with a spe-
cial pedagogical approach and gifted programmes, such
as The Netherlands or Germany, schools operating in dis-
advantaged neighbourhoods may be even more vulnera-
ble to rejection in school choices made by educationally
motivated families.
On the other hand, as the basic dynamics appear rel-
atively constant over diverse urban settings, the findings
offer opportunities to support both schools and strug-
gling neighbourhoods through active policies focused on
improving schools and specifically targeting the way they
are perceived by the general public. As cities are look-
ing for ways to combat urban deprivation, investing in
schools and strategically supporting positive school rep-
utations has significant potential in policies aimed at
breaking circles of deprivation in urban neighbourhoods
across different types of cities.
Acknowledgments
We would like to sincerely thank the editors of the
thematic issue, Tiit Tammaru, Siiri Silm, Frank Witlox,
Maarten van Ham, and Madli-Johanna Maidla, as well
as the four anonymous reviewers for their valuable and
helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article. We are
also grateful to our colleagues Sonja Kosunen, Antti
Paakkari, Sara Juvonen, and Sirpa Lappalainen who have
contributed to the projects and interviews this article is
based on. We also disclose receipt of the following finan-
cial support for the research, authorship, and/or pub-
lication of this article: This research was supported by
NordForsk, project number 86103, University of Helsinki.
Conflict of Interests
The authors declare no conflict of interests.
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About the Authors
Venla Bernelius is a tenure track Assistant Professor and Docent of Urban Geography at the Helsinki
Institute of Urban and Regional Studies, University of Helsinki, and heads the Geographies of Education
and Divided Cities (GED) research group. She focuses on themes of urban segregation, immigration and
housing, as well as social and spatial dynamics of education. She is also the vice-chair of the Finnish
Geographical Society.
Heidi Huilla works as a PhD and Project Researcher at the Faculty of Educational Sciences, University
of Helsinki. She is affiliated with the research units of Social Studies in Urban Education (SURE) and
Geographies of Education and Divided Cities (GED). Her research interests include themes of disadvan-
taged schools, urban education and inclusion in education. Her educational background is in sociology
and politics of education and history.
Social Inclusion, 2021, Volume 9, Issue 2, Pages 154–165 164

Isabel Ramos Lobato works as a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Helsinki Institute of Urban and
Regional Studies, University of Helsinki, and is part of the Geographies of Education and Divided Cities
(GED) research group. Her research interests are broadly rooted in urban and social geography with a
focus on social inclusion and exclusion in the fields of education and housing. In her PhD, she examined
parents’ choice of primary schools and its impact on school segregation in Germany.
Social Inclusion, 2021, Volume 9, Issue 2, Pages 154–165 165