Giving Voice to Those Who Are Not Heard – Findings from a Web-Survey Panel in a Crime-Ridden Swedish Neighborhood

The Swedish police have identified 61 neighborhoods that are poorly functioning and plagued by high crime rates. In total, more than 600,000 people live in these crime hotspots (out of a total population of 10 million.) A large proportion of residents in these neighborhoods (about 90 percent) have a foreign background, and the high crime rates are associated with social problems such as high unemployment rates and poor school performance. The neighborhoods, which are concentrated in larger metropolitan areas, are ethnically mixed, with many conflicts between groups originating from non-Western countries. This paper explores how beliefs about society are affected by living in these poorly functioning neighborhoods. We define societal beliefs broadly as social trust; political and institutional trust; national identities; and collective efficacy. The paper presents initial findings from a unique web-survey panel that recruits people living in one specific crime-ridden neighborhood in Gothenburg, the second largest city in Sweden. The results build on findings from three panel waves, a face-to-face recruitment survey and two web-based consecutive surveys. Given that the population is hard to reach, the paper also devotes attention to methodological questions regarding recruitment.