Project description
Title: Meaningful Leisure for Whom? Policy Framings, Municipal Practices, and Young People’s Experiences in Sweden
Start/end of the project: (September 2025 – August 2030)
Background
This PhD project is situated within the Swedish welfare system, where municipalities hold extensive responsibility for promoting children’s well-being and implementing preventive measures. Within this context, the project investigates how meaningful leisure is framed and practiced in Swedish youth policy, with particular attention to young people described as “at risk.” The project is grounded in Article 31 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), which is now incorporated into Swedish law to ensure children’s equal right to rest, play, culture, and leisure. Leisure provision in Sweden involves public, private, and civil-society actors, yet municipalities remain the central providers within the welfare system. Historically, leisure has been closely linked to prevention: from the late 19th century, leisure spaces were developed to address concerns about youth in rapidly urbanizing environments, since then municipalities have established recreational centres offering structured activities aimed at guiding and protecting children. Today, leisure has re-emerged as an area of growing political attention due to rising concerns about youth crime, unequal participation, and expanding preventive responsibilities placed on municipalities.
Aim: The project examines how the idea of meaningful leisure as both a right and a preventive measure is constructed and understood across different arenas: national policy, municipal governance, and young people’s everyday lives.
Research question: How is meaningful leisure framed as a prevention strategy in policy and municipal implementation, and how do young people who are targeted as “at risk” experience and make sense of this strategy?
Method: The study draws on qualitative document analysis, in-depth interviews with municipal actors, and focus groups with young people in selected municipalities. Together, these methods explore how policy ambitions materialize in practice and how they shape the everyday opportunities of children and youth considered to be at risk.