SAGE OpenOctober-December 2012: 1 10 The Author(s) 2012DOI: 10.1177/2158244012466249http://sgo.sagepub.comIntroductionResidentialsegregationandtheunequaldistributionoflife chancesthatitmayengenderposeamajorchallengefor contemporary welfare states because an immigration policy that does not provide equal opportunities to recent and estab-lishedcitizensisafailedone.Socialscientistsareincreas-ingly interested in trying to establish residential segregation asafactandinvestigatingitsshort-andlong-termconse-quences.Onehighlyinfluentialconceptinthisliteratureis that of the neighborhood, and particularly that of neighbor-hoodeffects.Originallydevelopedinthecontextofinner cities in the United States, it is increasingly being applied in Scandinavianresearchaswell.Inanattempttoarguethe underlyingmechanismsofneighborhoodeffects,various analystshaveproposedthatpeopleseverydaysocialinter-action is so intrinsically nested within neighborhood that the neighborhoodeffectcanactuallybeinterpretedasasocial interaction effect, or even as a social network effect. In this article, we set out to scrutinize this assumption by studying the friendships of ninth graders in three different schools by asking how their circles of close friends are constituted with respect to sex, ethnicity, school class, and neighborhood.The research question we ask in this study is as follows:ResearchQuestion1:Towhatextentisittheoreti-cally and empirically justified to use neighborhood effectsasaproxyforsocialinteractioneffectsor even social networks effects?The objective is to contribute to a better specification of the underlyingmechanismsthatbringaboutneighborhood effects. We do not doubt that neighborhood effects exist and thattheyareimportanttostudy;itisreasonabletoassume that neighborhoods sometimes influence peoples life chances substantially,andsucheffectshavebeenobservedempiri-cally. Yet, sociologists should strive to open up the black box of neighborhood effects to determine precisely what in neigh-borhoodsiscausingsystematicdifferencesinsocialout-comes (such as schooling and labor-market situation). If they fail to do this, they will only produce explanations of rather low explanatory value (see Boudon, 1998); that is, they can show if neighborhoods have an effect on social outcomes, but notwhy.Ifwewanttogobeyondpredictionandalsooffer sound sociological explanations, this is certainly an unsatis-fying situation (Elster, 2007; Hedstrm, 2005).1Neighborhood Effects and Social NetworksHorizontalresidentialsegregation,thatis,systematicclus-tering of people according to socioeconomic resources and/466249SGOXXX10.1177/215824401 2466249SAGE OpenEdling and Rydgren 20121Lund University, Sweden2Stockholm University, SwedenCorresponding Author:Christofer Edling, Department of Sociology, Lund University, Box 114,222 00 Lund, Sweden Email: christofer.edling@soc.lu.seNeighborhood and FriendshipComposition in AdolescenceChristofer Edling1 and Jens Rydgren2AbstractThesocialsurroundingsinwhichanindividualgrowsupandspendshisorhereverydaylifehaveaneffectonhisorher life chances. Much of the research into this phenomenon focuses on so-called neighborhood effects and has put particular emphasis on the negative effects of growing up in a poor neighborhood. Originating from the sociological study of inner-city problems in the United States, the research has recently been embraced by Scandinavian social scientists, who have generally assessed the phenomenon with reference to social network effects and the lock-in effects of ethnic enclaves. We critique the theoretical assumptions that we find in recent Scandinavian research and argue that a straightforward interpretation of neighborhood effects in terms of network effects is problematic. Our argument is based on an empirical analysis of friendship circlesofninthgradersinStockholm(N=240). Weconcludethatthefriendshipnetworksofninthgradersextendwell beyondtheneighborhood,thuscastingseriousdoubtonthenetworkeffectsassumptionofpreviousresearch. Wealso conclude that there is nothing in the reality of these ninth graders that confirms the established concept of the ethnic enclave.Keywordssocial interaction, friendship, adolescence, ethnicity, neighborhoodby guest on June 29, 2015 Downloaded from 2SAGE Openor racial or ethnic characteristics, is a common feature of all industrializedsocieties.Peoplewhogrowupincircum-stanceswheremostoftheirneighborsarepoorareless likely,forinstance,tobesuccessfulinschoolandintheir worklives.Thissituationhasledsocialscientiststoask whethertherearespecificneighborhoodcharacteristicsgoing beyond individual and family characteristicsthat can explainthisphenomenon.Theclaimisthatthesocialsur-roundingsmatterforpeopleslifechances.Thisisasocio-logically appealing claim that makes a lot of sense intuitively and has inspired considerable research on so-called neighbor-hoodeffects,focusinginparticularontheinner-cityprob-lemsintheUnitedStates(Sampson,2008;Sampson, Morenoff, & Gannon-Rowley, 2002; Wilson, 1987).As is often the case in contemporary empirical social sci-ences, ideas that drive research debates in the United States are imported and applied by European scholars. Consequently, we see a growing tendency among European social scientists toadaptconceptssuchasneighborhood,ghetto,ethnic enclave,andthelike,tocontemporaryEuropeansocieties (e.g.,Edin,Fredriksson,&slund,2003;Grnqvist,2006; Kauppinen, 2008; Lapeyronnie, 2008; van der Klaauw & van Ours, 2003). The fact of segregation poses a serious threat to theegalitarianidealsoftheScandinavianwelfarestates. Sweden is a case of particular importance given its history of fairly liberal immigration policies. Approximately 16% of the Swedish population is of foreign origin, and Sweden takes in the highest number of refugees in Europe. This has led to pro-nounced residential segregation by ethnic background, espe-cially in the larger cities. Several studies of the Swedish case have reported neighborhood and school effects for a variety ofsocialoutcomessuchasschoolgrades,educational attainment, labor-market standing, and welfare dependencyalthough these effects are usually rather small when individ-ualandfamily-specificcharacteristicshavebeenaccounted for,andtheeffectsaregenerallygreaterforschoolsthan forneighborhoods(see,forexample,Aberg,Hedstrm,& Kolm,2003;Andersson&Subramanian,2006;slund& Fredriksson,2005;Brnnstrm,2008;Bygren&Szulkin, 2007;Edinetal.,2003;Galster,Andersson,Musterd,& Kauppinen, 2008; Grnqvist, 2006; Szulkin & Jonsson, 2007).The crucial issue is the precise mechanisms by which the social surrounding, and neighborhoods in particular, matter forsocialoutcomes.Withoutaclearunderstandingofthe mechanismsthatproducetheeffect,wewillonlyproduce sociological explanations of rather low explanatory value. A relatively large number of mechanisms have been proposed, but the most influential ones in the literature have been social tiesandinteractioneffects,normsandcollectiveefficacy, andinstitutionalresources(Sampsonetal.,2002).Ineco-nomic research, spatial mismatch may be considered a fourth mechanism (Edin et al., 2003). Many studies list all or most ofthesemechanismsasreasonsforthedemonstrated,or expected,associationbetweenexplanansandexplanadum. However,veryfewstudiesactuallytrytoidentifythese mechanismsempiricallyandtheblackboxstillremains largelyintact(Mayer&Jencks,1989),andtheyremain purely theoretical constructs or assumptions about underly-ing explanations of observed statistical regularities. Indeed, ageneralcriticismofthisliteratureistheconsiderablegap between theory and analysis (Hedstrm & Swedberg, 1998), and it is safe to say that we know very little about the social mechanisms of neighborhood effects.UnliketheU.S.literatureonneighborhoodeffects, Swedishresearchhassingledoutnetworkandinteraction effects as the two principal mechanisms. Building on theo-ries of social capital (Coleman, 1988; Portes, 1998), it has emphasizedfactorssuchasinformation(e.g.,aboutjobs, educationandfuturecareerplanning,socialallowances), peerpressure,androlemodels.Inshort,inneighborhoods with scarce resources, people will have less valuable social capital embedded in their social relations, pressures for con-formitywillbedownwardratherthanupward,and becauseofalackofrolemodels,peoplewillhavelower aspirations. For example, in a recent study that looked spe-cifically at the role of ethnically segregated neighborhoods, our colleagues wrote thatThe point of departure for the present empirical analy-sis is . . . that the social interaction between individuals ofthesameethnicbackground,wholiveinthesame neighbourhood, is relatively strong and that these rela-tionsinfluencetheschoolperformance,educational choices, and consequently the future educational career ofchildrengrowingupthere.Suchnetworkmecha-nismsmayself-reinforcenormsandbehaviorsand have been found to influence, inter alia, the accumula-tionofhumancapital,theprobabilityofbeingunem-ployed, and the probability of becoming a recipient of social welfare. (Bygren & Szulkin, 2007, p. 7)The very same idea, that one can isolate the crucial deter-minants of an individuals social network by locating at his or her neighborhood, is similarly expressed in a study of eth-nic enclaves where it is said thatTheenclaverepresentsanetworkthatincreasesthe opportunities for gainful trade in the labor market . . . Further,thenetworkdisseminatesvaluableinforma-tion on, e.g., job opportunities . . . The enclave would thus improve labor market outcomes, in particular for recent immigrants and for individuals who have diffi-culty integrating into the labor market. Of course, the enclave may also provide information on matters that are not conducive to success in the labor market, such as welfare eligibility. (Edin et al., 2003, p. 336)Other studies that draw on the same assumption can eas-ily be added to these two (e.g., slund & Fredriksson, 2005; Grnqvist, 2006; Szulkin & Jonsson, 2007).by guest on June 29, 2015 Downloaded from Edling and Rydgren3We do not take issue with the claim that social networks matter in the ways described above. What we do find poten-tiallyproblematic,however,isthejumpfromgeographical space to social space, that is, the way in which neighborhood is used as a proxy for social network. The crux of the matter, also expressed by Brnnstrm (2008), is that although stud-ies of neighborhood and school effects in Sweden acknowl-edge that it is not self-evident that the observed associations arerootedinneighborhood/schoolmateinteractions,the resultsareofteninterpretedasifsuchsocialinteractions have brought about the empirical regularities2 (p. 465).Asindicatedbythequotationsabove,researchon neighborhoodeffectsinSwedenhasincreasinglyfocused onethnicsegregation.Thereasonsforthisaretwofold. First,ethnicsegregationinSwedenisassociatedwith socioeconomicdifferences,sothattheconcentrationof immigrantsishigherinneighborhoodsthatarepoorin termsofsocialresources.Second,itisassumedthat networksamongcoethnicsareparticularlydense,and thereforeitisbelievedthatitismorejustifiabletouse neighborhoodsasaproxyforsocialnetworksinthese cases. For instance, Bygren and Szulkin (2007) stated that their analyses are based on the assumption that individuals with the same ethnic background influence each other to a greaterdegreethandoindividualswithdifferentethnic backgrounds (p. 11). And they assume that a joint ethnic background raises the interaction probability and frequency betweentheindividualsandthatpersonswiththe samebackgroundrepresentsignificantothersinasocial environment (Bygren & Szulkin, 2007, p. 11).Thetheoreticalunderpinningsoftheseassumptionsare thegeneraltendencytowardsocialhomophilythatis,a preference for social interactions with people who are simi-lartooneselfandincreasedcontactopportunities.Itis well established that people mainly tend to become friends withpeoplewhoaresociallysimilartothemselves (McPherson, Smith-Lovin, & Cook, 2001). Yet despite this fact, there are several reasons to be critical of the assump-tions underlying research on ethnic enclaves and ethnic neighborhoods in a Swedish context. According to a com-monly used definition (slund & Fredriksson, 2005; Edin et al., 2003; Grnqvist, 2006), an ethnic neighborhood [is] a neighborhood where the share of the ethnic group residing in the neighborhood is at least twice as large as the share of the ethnic group in the population (slund & Fredriksson, 2005,p.6).Swedishresearchonethnicneighborhoodsor ethnicenclavesishighlyinfluencedbystudiesonhighly segregated ethnic neighborhoods in the United States, such asChineseinNewYork(Zhou,1992),CubansinMiami (Portes,1987),orKoreansinLosAngeles(Light& Bonacich,1988).Theseneighborhoodsarefairlywell delimitated geographically, and they have a number of char-acteristicsthatareusuallymissinginsegregatedareasin Sweden. First, they are dominated by one ethnic group. This is very seldom the case in Sweden, where segregated areas areusuallypopulatedbyimmigrantscomingfromalarge numbersofcountries.Hence,mostsegregatedareasin Swedenareethnicallyveryheterogeneousdespitethefact that relatively few native Swedes live there (see Brnnstrm, 2008). According to the definition of ethnic neighborhoods providedabove,aneighborhoodwith2%Iranians,for example,wouldbecalledanIranianneighborhood,if IranianspercentageofthepopulationinSwedenisonly 1%.ThisisquitedifferentfromChinatowninNewYork City.Second,andrelated,isthatintheAmericanethnic enclavesmentionedabove,peoplecanmanagetheirlives pretty well by using only the minority language. And a com-monminoritylanguagegoesalongwaytowardcreating social relations. However, because ethnic neighborhoods in Swedenaresoheterogeneous,acommonlanguage(other than Swedish) is usually lacking. Because of this, we find it problematic to import sociological studies from the United StatestotheNordiccountries,withoutfirstmodifyingthe assumptions.A Critical Assessment of Assumptions in Previous ResearchIt is generally assumed in research on neighborhood effects that neighborhood can serve as a proxy for social networks andconsequentlythatwecandrawconclusionsaboutnet-work effects from the neighborhood indicator itself. We may call this a jump from geographical space to social space. Is thisreasonable?First,asimpliedinsomeofthereviewed Swedishstudies,therearetheoreticalreasonsformaking theseassumptions(Abergetal.,2003).Fociofactivity playasignificantroleintheemergenceofnetworkties. Suchfociareimportantastheybringpeopletogetherin recurrentinteraction,therebyorganizingtheirsocialrela-tions (Feld, 1981). Neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, and civilsocietyorganizations(e.g.,churches,sportclubs)are examples of such foci. The more these foci overlap (e.g., if your neighbors are also your schoolmates and football team-mates),thegreaterthechancethatsocialinteractionswill develop into friendship relations. From a theoretical vantage point, it is reasonable to assume that the extent to which foci of activity are locally bounded, and thus overlap more with neighborhood(andoneanother),varieswithage,which means that childrens circles of friends tend to be more con-centratedingeographicalspacethanarethoseofadults. Hence, if a jump from social space to geographical space is reasonable at all, it should in particular be the case for chil-drenandadolescentswhoarestillinschool.Thisassump-tion is supported by a Swedish study that analyzed diaries of 130childrenagedbetweentheagesof11and14(vander Burgt, 2006). A majority of these children (more than 60%) had friends residing in their own neighborhoods. Yet the data clearlyindicatethatgeographicalproximitydecreasesin importance the older the children become: For the youngest children (in fifth grade), 46% had no friends living outside of their neighborhood; for the older children (in the seventh grade) the corresponding figure was only 30%.by guest on June 29, 2015 Downloaded from 4SAGE OpenYet in general terms, to use neighborhood as a proxy for social interaction is a rather strong assumption. The assump-tionthatpeopleresidinginNeighborhood Ainteractmore withoneanotherthanwithpeopleinNeighborhoodBis intuitively very plausible. However, the assumption that they interactmorewithoneanotherthanwithpeoplein Neighborhoods B to Z is considerably less plausible. As the number of people residing outside of ones neighborhoodeven slightly outsideis so much larger than the number of people residing within ones neighborhood, this assumption is not as self-evident as it is often presented to be. Statistically, therearesimplymorepeopleoutsidetheirneighborhood. Andtechnologically,itisbecomingincreasinglyeasy,and common,tomaintainclosesocialinteractionswithpeople who live far away.In his discussion of the focused interaction of social life, Feld provided a similar account of why we should hesitate to accept even the theoretical idea that neighborhood can be an approximation of social networks. People who share a focus are likely to share activities as well, according to Feld (1981),However,allindividualswhoshareafocusdonot necessarily interact with each other very much or very often.Forfociwhereeveryoneisforcedtointeract muchandoften(e.g.,families),alloftheindividuals associatedwiththatfocuswillbetiedtoeachother; butforfocithatarelessconstrainingoninteraction (e.g., city neighborhoods), only a slightly higher pro-portion of individuals will be tied than would be tied inthegeneralpopulation.Ingeneral,themorecon-straining a focus, the greater is the likelihood that two individualsassociatedwiththatfocuswillbetied. A focusmayinvolveverylittleconstraint,butwhere thereisnoconstraintatall,thereisnofocus....In general,largerfociwillbelessconstraining,because itisdifficulttoarrangeformanypeopletohavefre-quentjointactivities.However,theremaybesmall focithatinvolvelittleconstraintandlargeonesthat involve much. (p. 1019)Furthermore, there is a considerable risk of ecological fal-lacy in using neighborhoods as a proxy for social networks. Thesizeofthisriskdependspartlyonhowneighborhoods areoperationalized.SmallAreaMarketStatistics(SAMS) areasareusedinthemoresophisticatedSwedishstudies. SAMS, provided by Statistics Sweden, are designed to iden-tify relatively well-delineated socially and spatially homoge-neous neighborhoods, and they take account of factors such as housing type and tenure. The SAMS areas are relatively smallinsize,varyingbetween100and4,000individuals, withanaverageof970inhabitants(Abergetal.,2003; Andersson & Subramanian, 2006; Brnnstrm, 2008; Bygren & Szulkin, 2007). Municipalities, that is, large entities with amedianof16,000inhabitants(slund&Fredriksson, 2005; Edin et al., 2003), tend to be used in less sophisticated studiesofneighborhoodeffects.Itisourstrongcontention that only SAMS areas can be assumed to measure neighbor-hoods in any reasonable sense of the term.Below we will present empirical data collected from ninth graders in three Stockholm schools that clearly question the tenability of the jump from geographic space to social space that is common in Swedish research on neighborhood effects and school effects.DataWeconductedasurvey,Yourlifeandyourfuture,from November2007throughJanuary2008bydistributinga questionnairein13classesofninthgradersin3schools fromdistinctivelydifferentareasinthegreaterStockholm area. Weselectedschoolsfromalistof15schoolsthat(a) had a majority of their pupils living in the local area of the school (which is the case for the overwhelming majority of comprehensive schools in Sweden) and (b) were located in oneofthreetypesofareas. Theseareashadtohaveeither predominantlynon-Swedishethnichomogeneity,predomi-nantlySwedishethnichomogeneity,oraheterogeneous ethnic composition. Schools were contacted in no particular order, and the first school from each category that agreed to participate was selected. Schools included in the sample are locatedinthethreeareasAlby,Brandbergen,andSofia. Somecomparativestatisticsfortheseareasareprovidedin Table1,andsomekeycharacteristicsarefurtherdiscussed below.Despitethefactthatthesamplingprocedurewas nonrandom,wearefairlyconfidentthattheschoolswe selected are representative, and that the results and conclu-sions can be generalized to the Stockholm area and beyond.Alby is part of Botkyrka municipality in south-west met-ropolitan Stockholm. Alby has about 12,000 inhabitants and is a product of the early 1970s when modern Alby was built and most of the apartment blocks that still house most of its inhabitants were erected. About 77% of the population is of foreign origin, and in 2007, the unemployment rate was just below 5%. Alby has excellent infrastructure; it is close to the major highway and has a subway connection to the city.BrandbergenispartofHaningemunicipalityinsouth metropolitanStockholm.Brandbergenhasaboutthesame population as Alby and is also a product of the early 1970s with large apartment blocks. Brandbergen was given a major overhaul in the early 1990s to come to grips with its social problems. About 43% of the population of Brandbergen is of foreignorigin,andabout3.4%wereunemployedinlate 2007.Brandbergenisgeographicallyalittlemoreisolated than Alby,withbusconnectionstothecommuterrailnet-work.Both AlbyandBrandbergenborderextensiverecre-ational areas and nature reserves.Sofia is part of Sdermalm in central Stockholm and has a little less than 8,000 inhabitants. About 14% of the popula-tioninSofiaisofforeignorigin,andunemploymentwas about1,9%in2007. AsissuggestedinTable1, Albyand Brandbergenareworking-classareaswhereasSofiaisan affluent middle-class area.3by guest on June 29, 2015 Downloaded from Edling and Rydgren5The questionnaires were filled out during class hours with a research assistant present. A total of 241 pupils participated across these 13 classes. As outside observers, we had no con-trol over class absenteeism, and we did not offer any reward forparticipating.Overallresponserateacrossclassrooms wasapproximately80%.BoysinBrandbergenandAlby where less willing to participate than girls, which means that boysareunderrepresentedinthesample. Asitturnedout, apartfromoneexample,internalnonresponsewasnota problem,withonlyoneofthedistributedquestionnaires handed in with most items blank.The demographics of the samples in the three schools, dis-playedinTable2,mirrortheskewdistributionofpeopleof foreign origin that we find in the three areas, with 33% of the students in Sofia being of foreign background compared with 41%inBrandbergen,and98%in Alby.Parentscountryof birthwasusedtocodeforeignoriginasabinaryvariable.4 Because of the small sample size, we are not able to analyze distinctcountriesorregions.However,themostcommon regions of origin among those with a non-Swedish background were the Middle East, followed by South America and Latin America, and the three most common countries were Turkey, Chile,andIraq.Butitisimportanttokeepinmindthatwe analyzedthesecondgenerationandthatthemajorityofthe ninthgradersinoursamplewereborninSweden,ranging from87%in Albyto97%inSofia. Wehadmoregirlsthan boys in the sample in both Alby and Brandbergen. We could notcontrolclassabsenteeismatthedatagatheringsessions, and girls were simply more willing than boys to participate. ResultsThe key question that we asked was whether it is reasonable tousetheconceptofneighborhoodasaproxyforsocial interactionspace.Itremainsanopenquestionwhetherthe theoretical ideas encapsulated in concepts such as neighbor-hood,enclave,andghettotranslateatalltoScandinavian reality. However, there is one even greater problem and that istheassumptionthatneighborhoodisalsoareasonable proxy for social interaction. That is to say, that people tend tohavetheirsociallysignificantrelationshipsembedded within a well-defined and fairly limited geographic space. In essence, this is a sort of mean field solution that reduces the multidimensionality of social interaction to the bidimension-alityofgeographicalspace.Ifitworks,itisanextremely efficientsolution.Butitisveryboldandrunstheriskof leading researchers to an ecological fallacy. Thus, the issue needs to be further explored.The individuals in our data were 15 or 16 years old and werestillinschool.Theoretically,thelikelihoodthattheir circles of friends were locally bounded should be higher than for older persons out of school. Our empirical test of neigh-borhoodsasaproxyforsocialnetworkswasthusrather Table 1. Background Statistics for the Areas (Alby, Brandbergen, Sofia), Municipalities (Botkyrka, Haninge, Stockholm), as Stockholm County, and SwedenSwedenStockholm countyBotkyrka kommun AlbyHaninge kommun BrandbergenStockholm city SdermalmNorra SofiaaPopulation 2007 1,949,516 79,031 11,705 73,698 10,355 795,163 114,657 7,781bForeign background 2007 (%) 17.3 23.6 50.8 76.8 27.1 43.4 27.6 16.3 14.3bOpenly unemployed 2007 (%) 2.5 2.1 3.4 4.9 2.4 3.4 2.4 2.2 1.9bOn sickness benefit 2007 (%),age 16-649.9 7.8 10.1 11.7 9.0b12.0 7.3 6.4 5.6bMean income 2007(1,000-SEK)240c281c225c 202b153b247c 235b,d208b,d281c 282b292b Post secondary school education 2007, age 25-64 (%)36e45e27.4 23.7 27e23e51.8 60.0 60.5Source: Compiled from online sources at Statistics Sweden, Swedish Public Employment Service, Frskringskassan, and Statistical offices in Botkyrka, Haninge, and Stockholm municipalities, see www.scb.se, www.ams.se, www.haninge.se, and www.usk.stockholm.se.aIncluding Gamla stan and Sdra Hammarbyhamnen.b16 years and older.c20 years and older.d2006.e2008.Table 2. Demographics of Ninth Graders in Three Stockholm Schools (Frequency)SchoolSofia Brandbergen AlbySexMale 45 31 24Female 42 60 38Born in SwedenYes 84 81 54No 3 10 8Foreign backgroundYes 29 37 61No 58 54 1Total 87 91 62 (N = 240)by guest on June 29, 2015 Downloaded from 6SAGE Openconservative, as many of the studies we have cited deal with older individuals.Tomeasurepeoplescircleoffriends,weaskedour respondents to think of, at most, five friends with whom they most often spend time.5 We further asked the respondents to indicateforeachfriendhisorhersex,age(similarage/younger/older),ethnicbackground(Swedish/immigrant), family relation (family/nonfamily),6 whether or not they are in the same class, and whether or not they live in the same neighborhood.7Thus,thecriticalindicatorforthepresent analysisisthenumberoffriendswholivedinthesame neighborhood.Butsomeoftheotheraspectsoffriendship composition will also be part of the analysis. It is potentially problematictousesubjectivemeasuresforthisresearch question,8 and we cannot know for sure how the respondents understood the term in the same neighborhood. However, in anearlierstudybyAndersson(2001),asampleofpeople delimited almost SAMS-identical areas on maps when asked abouttheirneighborhoods,whichindicatesthatthesub-jectiveunderstandingofneighborhoodscorrespondswell with some of the more objective classifications.Almost every respondent (n = 225) produced information on the maximum number of five friends and their character-istics. In the subsequent analyses of friendship composition, we analyze only those who reported five friends. We calcu-lateforeachrespondentthenumberoffriendsofthesame sex and the same ethnic background who were in the same class and lived in the same neighborhood. The indicator on same ethnic background is constructed from the distinction betweenSwedishandnon-Swedish.9Theinternalnonre-sponse for these particular indicators ranged from 7% (same class)to14%(samebackground).Eachindicatorhasa straightforward interpretation and takes on a value from 0 to 5, where 5 indicates that all friends are of the same sex, for example.We use friendship and friendship circle interchange-ablywhendescribingthesocialinteractionspaceofninth graders. We refrain from talking about networks because we do not have information on network volume or density, nor on the quality of friendship ties. However, we are confident that the indicators tell us a great deal about the composition of the friendships that define the core of the social interac-tion space of teenagers.Wegodirectlytotheheartofthematteranddisplay,in Figure1,thefractionofninthgraderswhoreportedthata majorityoftheirfriendsliveinthesameneighborhoodas they do. The darker shaded piece of each pie indicates that a majority of friends (i.e., 3) lived in the same neighborhood astherespondent.In Alby,64%oftheninthgradershada majorityoftheirfriendsintheirownneighborhood,which suggeststhatsocialinteractionisindeedgeographically local. However, for Sofia, the corresponding figure is 44%, and in Brandbergen, only 35% of the ninth graders said that amajorityoftheirfriendsliveinthesameneighborhood. This means that in two of the three schools that we surveyed, a majority of teenagers had only a minority of their friends in theirownneighborhood.Thisstronglysuggeststhatthe friendshipcirclesofninthgradersarenotconfinedtotheir immediate neighborhood.Itseemsfairtoconcludethatwithoutfurtherqualifica-tions,neighborhoodisnotareasonableproxyforsocial interaction space. Overall, we find that a large fraction of the Figure 1. Percentage of ninth graders with a majority of friends in the neighborhood across three Stockholm schoolsby guest on June 29, 2015 Downloaded from Edling and Rydgren7ninthgraderswesurveyedhadaconsiderablenumberof friends living in another neighborhood than their own. And even among those ninth graders who had the most confined friendship circles, at least 35% had two thirds of their friends in another neighborhood.Wenoteasubstantialandstatisticallysignificantdiffer-ence between schools with respect to whether ninth graders havefriendshipswithintheirownneighborhood.With respecttoourindicators,schoolchildreninBrandbergen seem to have more diverse friendship circles than schoolchil-dren in Alby, with Sofia somewhere in between but closer to Brandbergen. Let us further investigate this result by adding informationonwhethertheninthgraderstendedtohave friends of the same sex and of the same ethnic background who were in the same school class.InFigure2,wedisplayforeachschoolthenumberof friends, from 0 to 5, who share the respondents characteris-tics. Moving clockwise from the upper left corner, we give numberoffriendsofsamesex,numberoffriendsofsame ethnicbackground,numberoffriendslivinginthesame neighborhood, and number of friends in same school class. We note that with respect to sex, there is a strong tendency in all schools for same-sex friendship circles. It is indeed rare (about 7%) for a ninth grader of either sex to have a majority of opposite-sex friends.There is a tendency across all three schools for a majority of the friends of a ninth grader to be of the same ethnic back-ground(notethatthisisacrudeindicatorthatonlydistin-guishesbetweenSwedishandnon-Swedishbackgrounds). However, this tendency is especially pronounced among the ninth graders in Alby, where as many as 70% said that all of theirfriendswereofthesameethnicbackgroundasthey, compared with about 38% in the other two schools. For ninth graders in Alby, sharing the same ethnic background means almost without exception that both they and their friends are ofnon-Swedishorigin.TheninthgradersinSofiaseemto have had the most diverse friendship circles with respect to ethnic background. But despite the fact that 8% said that all of their friends were of another ethnic background, as many as 75% said that a majority (60%) of their friends were of thesameethnicbackgroundasthem. Thecomparativefig-ures for Brandbergen are 1% and 80%, respectively.Let us now approach the key question of whether friend-shipisspatiallystructured,butthistimefocusingonthe school. Admittedly, school is much more than a spatial qual-ity, organizing as it does a significant part of most teenagers Figure 2. Composition of friendship circles of ninth graders in three Stockholm schoolsNote: Chi-square statistics (10 df): sex (5.51, n.s.), ethnic background (28.8, p < .01), school class (22.3, p < .05), neighborhood (23.3, p < .01).by guest on June 29, 2015 Downloaded from 8SAGE Opendailylife.Nevertheless,schoolsarealsospatiallybound, attractingstudentsprimarilyfromthelocalneighborhoods. This is why we are interested in the number of friends who are in the same class at school (lower left graph in Figure 2). Atfirst,thereseemstobenocleartendencyinthesethree distributions.Thenumberoffriendsinthesameclassis rather nicely distributed in all three schools around a mode of two to three friends. Thus, while most ninth graders have abalancedmixinandoutofclass,sometendtohavea majorityoftheirfriendsintheirownclass,whereasothers tendtohaveonlyaminorityoftheirfriendsinthesame school class.However,itisworthpayingattentiontothetailendsof the distribution of number of friends in the same class. In the Albyschool,3%saidthatnoneoftheirfriendswerein the same class, and 12% said that all of their friends were in thesameclass.ComparethiswiththeSofiaschool,where notasingleteenagerhadallofhisorherfriendsinsame class, and 16% said that none of their friends were in their class.10Thisisastrikingdifference,whichindicatesthat friendshipamongninthgradersinAlbywasmuchmore determined by the classroom than it was among schoolchil-dren in the other two schools. The lower right graph in Figure 2 gives the distribution of friends living in the same neigh-borhood.WelearnedfromFigure1thatitisprematureto assume neighborhood to be an indicator of social interaction space. We provide this graph to allow for a direct comparison with the other friendship composition statistics.Theevidencewehavepresentedclearlysuggeststhat Alby could be a strong case of the type of neighborhood that isintuitivelysuggestedintheliteratureonneighborhood effects. Thevastmajorityofninthgradersin Albywereof non-Swedish background, they tended to make friends with others who were non-Swedish, their friends also tended to be classmates to a greater extent than in the other schools, and a majority of their friends tended to be in the same neighbor-hood. Yet, we would strongly dispute that Alby is an ethnic enclave.Unfortunately,ourcrudebinarymeasureofethnic backgrounddoesnotallowustoaddressthisquestion directly.However,wedidasktherespondentswhichlan-guage they speak with their friends.AsshowninTable3,thevastmajority,90%,spoke Swedish with their friends. Among the 125 persons of non-Swedish origin in the sample, only 16% said that they regu-larly spoke a language other than Swedish with their friends. Therest,84%,saidtheyspokeSwedishwiththeirfriends. Alby is no different in this respect. Despite the fact that 98% ofourninthgradersinAlbywereofforeignorigin,more than80%saidthattheyspokeSwedishwiththeirfriends, reflecting the fact that segregated areas in Stockholm (and in SwedenandScandinavia)areethnicallyhighlyheteroge-neous and that for the young, the natural choice of language becomes that of the new country.Yet,wedoseeanAlby-effectonspatiallybounded friendship,andthiseffectisfurtherestablishedinTable4, where we regress the number of friends in the neighborhood on the respondents sex, ethnic background, and school. We notestatisticallysignificanteffectsofsexand Albyschool onthenumberoffriendslivinginthesameneighborhood. Girls had a tendency to have more friends who did not live in thesameneighborhoodcomparedwithboys.TheAlby-effect is also substantial, with ninth graders in Alby tending to have more friends in the neighborhood than ninth graders in both Brandbergen and Sofia.11BasedonFigure2,wefeelconfidentthatfriendship amongStockholmninthgradersintheearly2000swas highly homogeneous with respect to sex and ethnicity, just as one would expect. Without pursuing this at greater length, it isinterestingtonotethattheninthgraderswhosaidthata majority of their friends were of another ethnic background werethemselvesmainlyofnon-Swedishorigin.Thisgoes without saying in Alby, where almost everyone in our survey was of non-Swedish background by our definition. But this was true in the other two schools as well. Among the ninth gradersinBrandbergenwhosaidthatamajorityoftheir friends were of a different ethnic background, 11 out of 14 were of non-Swedish background. The same went for Sofia, where17outof21oftheninthgraderswithamajorityof friendsfromanotherethnicbackgroundwerethemselves non-Swedes. This would be a worthwhile object of future study, as it suggests that the immigrant kids could play an importantbrokeringrolebetweenSwedesandnon-Swedes in Swedish society.Table 3. Language Spoken With Friends in Three Stockholm Schools (%)SchoolSofia Brandbergen Alby TotalSwedish 96 91 82 91Other 4 9 18 9Total 100 100 100 100 (n = 237)Chi-square(1 df)14.2 (p < .01)Table 4. Poisson Regression of Number of Friends in Neighbor-hoodonSex,EthnicBackground,andSchool(Unstandardized Coefficients) SE TFemale .226* .092 2.47Non-Swedish .052 .111 0.64Alby .332** .128 2.61Sofia .088 .110 0.42Constant .816 .104 7.80LR chi-square (4 df) 17.09**n 216Note: LR = likelihood ratio.*p < .05. **p < .01.by guest on June 29, 2015 Downloaded from Edling and Rydgren9DiscussionResearchontheUnitedStateshasconvincinglydemon-stratedtheimportanceofneighborhoodeffectsonthelife chances of the individual. And some studies aiming at repli-catingtheseresultsforScandinaviahavealsoestablished smallbutsignificanteffectsofneighborhoodforvarious outcomes.Sucheffectshavebeeninterpretedintermsof network effects, meaning that the driving force between these correlationsismicro-levelsocialinteractionpatterns.Of course, all empirical regularities should be stated in terms of their generating mechanisms (Hedstrm, 2005), and this line of research is to be applauded for taking explanatory theory serious.However,themicromechanismshaveneverbeen empirically established. And despite the fact that they rest on some fairly strong assumptions about the structure of social interaction,researchershavesometimesprovidedverylax theoreticalsupport.Becausethisishighlypolicy-relevant research, we argue that it is of the utmost importance to fur-therinvestigatethecriticalassumptionthatneighborhood effects can be interpreted in terms of network effects.Researchers focusing on Sweden have a unique opportu-nity to use register data to study a large variety of social out-comes. Thesedataarefantasticinmanyways,inparticular for individual-level analysis, and they usually avoid many of theproblemsassociatedwithsurveydata(suchaslow responserates).Yettheavailabilityofgooddatadoesnot mean that it should be used for everything. We lack register dataforsocialrelations,networks,andinteractionpatterns, and it is tempting for researchers to use shortcut strategies by using neighborhoods, for which data are available from regis-ters, as a proxy (e.g., Bygren & Szulkin, 2007).No large-scale data are yet available for social interaction and individual attitudes at the individual level. However, we havetakenafirststepinlookingcloseratonecritical assumptionaboutmicro-levelinteraction.Andwehave demonstrated that the reliance on ecological data is an erro-neousstrategy.Itisuntenabletouseneighborhoodsasa proxy for networks. In our study of three schools, only Alby provided some support for the notion that neighborhood cap-tures social interaction at least to some degree. The other two did not. Hence, although there are strong theoretical reasons to assume that network and interaction effects are important factorsforunderstandingsocialoutcomessuchasschool grades,educationalattainment,labor-marketstanding,and welfare dependencythe only way to study these effects is to collect network data. We also see it as potentially useful to combinequantitativeresearchwithethnographicstudies (e.g., Lapeyronnie, 2008) to better understand important dif-ferencesbetweenneighborhoods(e.g.,betweenAlbyand Brandbergen).However,thatneighborhoodisgenerallyapoorproxy forsocialnetworksandinteractionsdoesnotdiminishthe factthatneighborhoodsmightbeanimportantfactorfor explainingvarioussocialoutcomesinitsownrespect. Institutionalresourcesandspatialmismatcharetwo potentially important factors, and these mechanisms would come more to the fore in studies of neighborhood effects if networkeffectscouldbeaccountedfordirectly.Weagree withBrnnstrm(2004)thattheblackboxofneighbor-hoodeffectsstillneedstobefurtherinvestigated[if]we want to achieve a better link between the theoretical and the empirical levels (p. 2534).AcknowledgmentsWeextendprofoundthankstooursurveyparticipants,theninth gradersinAlby,Brandbergen,andSofiaschools,aswellasto teachers and staff in those schools who agreed to cooperate with us. PrBendzwasinstrumentalintheplanningandexecutionofthe survey,andwearemorethanthankfultohimforprovidingsuch resourceful and meticulous research assistance.Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.FundingTheauthor(s)disclosedreceiptofthefollowingfinancialsupport fortheresearchand/orauthorshipofthisarticle:Wegratefully acknowledgefinancialsupportfromtheEuropeanResearch Council (ERC Starting Grant 263422).Notes1.Hence,thepurposeofthisstudyisneithertodisprovethe existenceofneighborhoodeffectsnortotestsocialnetwork effects;itismuchmorerestricted(butnolessimportant)to critically scrutinize the assumption that neighborhoods can be used as a proxy for social interaction or even social networks.2.Hence,moststudiesarenotasexplicitasGrnqvistsstudy of Helsinki (2006) in stating that this paper does not answer the question why enclaves affect educational attainments, but merely that it does (p. 370).3.Forcomparison,notethatabout17%oftheSwedishpopu-lationisofforeignbackgroundandabout2.5%wereunem-ployedin2007.ThecorrespondingfiguresforStockholm County are 23.5% and 2.1%.4.Swedish if both parents were born in Sweden or the Nordic countries; see also Footnote 10.5.The phrasing of the question (in Swedish) was Think about afriendorfriendsthatyoumostoftenmeetandspendtime together with. Think of at most five friends.6.We used the Swedish word for extended family, which is slkt.7.Live (does not live) in the same neighborhood.8.Most of the studies cited in this article rely on data from offi-cial population registers.9.NinthgradersbothofwhoseparentswereborninSweden, or one of whose parents was born in Sweden and the other in oneoftheNordiccountry,andwhospeaksonlySwedishat home are coded as Swedish. All others are coded as non-Swedish. Thus, if the respondent is Swedish and the friend isreportedashavingaSwedishbackground,thisfriendis coded as having the same ethnic background.by guest on June 29, 2015 Downloaded from 10SAGE Open10.TheBrandbergenschoolwassomewhereinbetween,but closertoSofia.Threepercenthadalloftheirfriendsinthe same class, and 16% said that none of their five friends were in their class.11.Becausethedependentvariableisacountvariable,we report results from a Poisson regression. 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He is interested in theoretically based empirical social science with particular attention to social network analysis.Jens Rydgren is a professor of sociology at Stockholm University. Heisworkingwithintheareasofpoliticalsociology,ethnicrela-tions, and social networks.by guest on June 29, 2015 Downloaded from