Keeping Apart on the Playground: Construction of Informal Segregation on Public Playgrounds in Multiethnic Neighborhoods

Informal Segregation Built into Practices and Ingrained in Context

Unofficial boundaries between different groups (e.g., ethnic/racial, religious) are often reproduced collectively through everyday practices and behavior (Dixon and Durrheim 2003). Prior research on such informal segregation has focused particularly on divided or postconflict communities, such as White and Black people in South Africa (e.g., Alexander and Tredoux 2010) and Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland (e.g., Dixon et al. 2020), but has also looked at multiethnic contexts in the United States and elsewhere (e.g., Swyngedouw 2013). In these environments, research has analyzed informal segregation in public and semipublic spaces where contact could potentially occur but does not, for example, on beaches (Dixon and Durrheim 2003), in university lecture halls (Koen and Durrheim 2010) and cafeterias (Clack, Dixon, and Tredoux 2005), on public transport (Swyngedouw 2013), in public parks (Abdelmonem and McWhinney 2015), and in shopping malls (Priest et al. 2014).

This research has also described how segregation is maintained by various behavioral practices, such as seating patterns and visiting times (e.g., Alexander and Tredoux 2010; Koen and Durrheim 2010). In their recent review of “informal ‘micro-ecological’ practices of (re)segregation,”Bettencourt et al. (2019) identified three psychosocial processes underlying the embodied practices of microecological spatial segregation in everyday life: negative attitudes and stereotypes, ingroup identification and threat, and feelings of anxiety, fear, and insecurity. Yet not all intergroup behavior derives from these processes. For example, prior research shows a homophilic tendency to favor similar others over difference (Mackinnon, Jordan, and Wilson 2011), which can lead to seeking ingroup company at the cost of intergroup contact. Ingroup company is also preferred because it consumes less resources than intergroup interaction (Al Ramiah et al. 2015). Therefore, outgroup avoidance can result from apathy rather than hostility (Paolini et al. 2022).

In this study, we analyze how segregation is (re)produced and maintained on public playgrounds. Playgrounds are semipublic spaces that offer a potential arena for regular intergroup contact in ethnically diverse neighborhoods, unlike many previously studied public and semipublic spaces that afford only fleeting encounters and rarely provide reasons to make contact with strangers. Parents of young children often attend playgrounds to network with other local parents to fulfill their needs for company and social support (Bader, Lareau, and Evans 2019; see also Hunter 2010). Children's behavior plays an essential role in initiating contact between parents (see Cahill 1987) and thus in forming parents’ networks.

Despite this potential, recent research has illustrated the difficulties of interethnic contact on playgrounds. Perrem (2018) showed that Western immigrant parents in Japan had negative contact experiences with local parents, leading them to turn to private spaces with their children. Parents who continued using the playgrounds experienced feelings of exclusion and sadness at their child's lack of peer contacts there. To our knowledge, no other research has analyzed parents’ interethnic contact experiences on public playgrounds.

Perrem’s (2018) main explanation for negative interethnic contacts was that visible bodily differences among the children complicated the interethnic encounters and influenced the parents’ perception of belonging. Although Perrem (2018) referred to norms of bodily appearance, he did not analyze how cultural parenting norms and everyday child-care routines influenced this process of segregation. Parenting, however, is strongly shaped by culture-specific habits and norms (Bornstein 2012). Therefore, it is possible that norms influence parents’ intergroup encounters or even inhibit them—often unintentionally. Thus, to better understand informal segregation on playgrounds and generally, it is important to analyze how parenting norms and routines (re)produce it.

Norms Producing and Maintaining Informal Segregation

Norms are socially shared standards of appropriate behavior in certain contexts that define individuals’ and group members’ behavior at multiple levels (Pettigrew 2018). Research has been conducted on group norms (e.g., perceived ingroup norms on contact; Tezanos-Pinto, Bratt, and Brown 2010), societal norms (e.g., discrimination policies; Pettigrew 1998), and cultural norms (e.g., parenting norms; Bornstein 2012). In addition to being group-, society-, and culture-specific, norms can also be context-specific: norms are often associated with a certain space and organize behavior there (Alexander and Tredoux 2010).

Previous research has shown that intergroup norms play an especially important role in the reproduction of informal segregation. Alexander and Tredoux's (2010) study on a South African university campus demonstrated that segregated spaces, racial relations, and the coexistence of groups were managed carefully by a set of intergroup norms that were communicated nonverbally to others. Such unspoken rules reproduced informal segregation on the campus through “belonging” and “exclusion” as groups sought to reproduce the dominant social order through the racialization of space. Thomas (2005), in turn, showed in her ethnography of teenage girls in a U.S. high school how the girls encountered, internalized, and came to repeat racialization through their everyday spatial practices in the school lunchroom (e.g., sitting together within their racial ingroup girls). The segregation of racial groups in their school seemed “natural” to them but was in fact produced through their daily performative work. Norms are not fixed or “natural” but are actively applied by group members who negotiate, interpret, and manage them (Horne and Mollborn 2020).

Parenting norms are not fixed either (Bornstein 2012); expectations of “good parenting” can vary by ethnic group, gender, and socioeconomic class, and the intersection of these different expectations forms a web of multiple and sometimes contradictory ideals of parenting (Faircloth 2014). The now common ideal of “intensive mothering,” for example, is particularly endorsed by middle- and upper-class mothers (Hays 1996; see also Faircloth 2014). While these mothering norms can increase social order and a sense of commonality among those who follow them, they can also alienate others who either do not share such norms or are unable to follow them (see Horne and Mollborn 2020). This especially affects culturally different and other minority mothers for whom attaining the hegemonic “normality” or ideals in parenting is not similarly possible or desired due to race, class, or resources (Peltola 2016). These mothers, therefore, particularly need to negotiate and manage such ideals in their everyday lives (see Seppälä et al. 2022).

Public playgrounds are spaces of multiple and changing norms. As an institution, they endorse hegemonic cultural norms of parenting (Lareau 2011; Peltola 2016), but parents from different cultural and societal groups also visit them, bringing their own understanding of parenting ideals. It therefore follows that parenting norms need to be negotiated in everyday life on the playground (Horne and Mollborn 2020). Parents’ difficulties in following the hegemonic norms of the playground can lead to disengagement from playground activities and a subsequent avoidance of such activities. Diversity of parenting practices can also cause conflicts between parents with different interests. Thus, not only intergroup norms but also cultural norms of everyday parenting may (re)produce informal segregation. Previous analysis of this process, however, has neglected the role of these wider cultural norms. With this analytical frame in mind, we examine playgrounds because they offer an ideal setting for studying how intergroup and cultural normative practices (re)produce informal segregation in Finland.

Context of the Study: Public Playgrounds in Helsinki, Finland

We conducted an ethnographic study in two multiethnic neighborhoods in Helsinki, Finland, a country whose history of modern immigration is relatively short compared to many other European nations. Currently, 8 percent (440,000 people) of residents are first- or second-generation immigrants, one-quarter of them living in Helsinki (City of Helsinki 2021b; Official Statistics of Finland 2021). More than half (53 percent) of first-generation immigrants have European backgrounds (e.g., Russia, Estonia, etc.), 30 percent have Asian backgrounds, and 11 percent have African origins. Among second-generation immigrants, 46 percent have European, 28 percent Asian, and 22 percent African backgrounds (Official Statistics of Finland 2021). Overall, the migrant population is younger than the Finnish population; one in four children below school age in the metropolitan area of Helsinki has a migrant background (Official Statistics of Finland 2021).

In Finland, “being Finnish” is strongly associated with whiteness and Finnish ancestors. In everyday language, “immigrant” and “foreigner” are commonly used and racialized without explicit mention of race (see Lundström 2017), which increases the risks of taking a color-blind approach to ethnic/racial diversity (Bonilla-Silva 2018). The city of Helsinki, however, aims to prevent segregation between neighborhoods, having, for example, recently promoted residents’ equality through education in antiracism (City of Helsinki 2017, 2021a).

OPEN IN VIEWER

Photograph 1.

A typical public playground in Helsinki, Finland in the summer. The playground area includes an outdoor space with green areas, different play areas (e.g., climbing frames, swings, slide), a playground building that is usually open on weekdays from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., and a wide open area where the free lunch for the children is shared in the summer. Although the playground has fences, the gates are not locked, even at night, and it is possible to visit at any time. To protect the privacy of our interlocutors, this playground is from a different neighborhood than the studied playgrounds.

Public playgrounds in Finland offer free-of-charge activity spaces for young children with their parents in every neighborhood. There are 64 municipal playgrounds around Helsinki, where full-time instructors trained in social services or education offer early childhood education and care for children, support for parents, and after-school clubs for the youngest pupils (City of Helsinki 2021c). These activities are organized mostly outdoors on the playground. The instructors work from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., during which time the indoor building is also open for playground visitors. In the mornings, the instructors interact with young children and their families, while in the afternoon, they focus on schoolchildren. Public playgrounds form an important part of the city's services for families with children (see further King and Sills-Jones 2018; Moll and Kuusi 2021).

The home care of children under three is financially supported by the state in Finland. It is popular: in 2020, more than 99 percent of children under one, 63 percent of one-year-olds, 28 percent of two-year-olds, and 16 percent of three-year-old children were cared for at home, usually by a parent (Säkkinen and Kuoppala 2021). While Nordic countries have relatively gender-equal parenting policies, very few fathers visited the studied playgrounds (outside of summer holidays). Finnish fathers’ use of parental leaves is far behind that seen in Iceland, Norway, and Sweden, and only 5 percent of Finnish fathers share parental leave with the mother (Eerola et al. 2019). Thus, our study focuses on mothers, who formed the vast majority of the adult playground users.

A diverse neighborhood can provide a number of opportunities for inter- and intraethnic encounters for the parents of young children (e.g., Paajanen et al. forthcoming; Schaeffer 2013; Wilson 2013). Such encounters can help immigrant mothers create positive relationships with majority group mothers, thus benefiting the integration of immigrant mothers and enhancing the social cohesion of the community (see Stevenson and Sagherian-Dickey 2016). Playground encounters between mothers from migrant backgrounds and local Finnish mothers, however, were rare during our field study, which alerted us to the absence. Reflecting on this and on prior research on informal segregation and norms, our attention was drawn to the specific question of how informal segregation is built and sustained through everyday social practices and norms present on playgrounds and among mothers.

Methods

This article draws on ethnographic research including participant observation and follow-up interviews conducted in two adjacent multiethnic neighborhoods in Helsinki, which were expected on the basis of their demographic profile to offer good opportunities for intergroup contact. Selecting them, we used the following criteria: (1) at least-one third of children under four years old had a foreign mother tongue, (2) more than 100 children with a foreign mother tongue lived in the area, (3) Finnish/Swedish predominated as the mother tongue, (4) the area had good local services for families with children (e.g., a public child health care clinic, family clubs, playgrounds), and (5) the socioeconomic status of the population was as close as possible to the average across Helsinki. Playgrounds were chosen as a special site of observation because previous research has shown that they provide opportunities to socialize with and receive social support from other local families (e.g., Bader et al. 2019).

Participant observation was conducted between August 2018 and June 2019 on the public playgrounds and other public spaces used by local families. For the first three months, the first author participated sporadically in the daily life of all four playgrounds in the area and occasionally observed other places, such as streets and a local shopping mall. Then we chose one playground, centrally located in the neighborhoods, as our primary field. In August, the fieldwork started with establishing a confidential relationship with playground staff to facilitate unchallenged attendance at the playgrounds and enable relatively inconspicuous and unobtrusive data collection.

The ethnographic data were collected during 70 observation periods, of which 32 (about 90 hours; 0–7 days per month) were on the playgrounds. Playgrounds were regularly observed during their organized activities in the mornings and early afternoons, and each research visit lasted about three hours. A few field visits were also made in the evenings and weekends, and relationships with several interlocutors were further developed at other field sites and during interviews. Observations focused on mothers who, in this context, were accompanied by their young children. During the daytime, all the mothers on the playground had children younger than preschool (i.e., six years old), and many had more than one child with them. The first author observed routine playground activities (e.g., playground “Olympics,” singing, and playing), talked with visitors and instructors, and observed the mothers’ interactions on the playground.

Synchronously with participant observation, the same researcher conducted semistructured follow-up interviews with 24 local mothers of children under three (10 from migrant backgrounds) three times every six months. The interviewees were recruited in the target neighborhoods from different local activities for families (N = 17), through the public child health care clinic (N = 4), and by snowballing (N = 3). The researcher also encountered some interviewees during fieldwork, thus becoming more acquainted with them, but others she met only in the interviews. Compared to the interviews, the playground observation produced greater variety in the age, gender, and roles of interlocutors (e.g., playground instructors). While no specific questions about playgrounds or segregation were asked, interviewees spontaneously talked about their related experiences, and these data were used in this analysis.

Data were collected by the first author, a White Finnish woman. Communication in the field and interviews were conducted in Finnish, English, or Spanish, in line with the researcher's language fluency, at the participant's preference. During participant observation, the researcher jotted down notes that were later used to write up a detailed field diary. The semistructured interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim for later analysis. This research received prior ethical statement from the Ethics Committee of the Tampere Region, Finland. To protect the privacy of our interlocutors, all names are pseudonymized. The study is part of MAMANET, a larger research project focusing on intra- and intergroup relations of mothers of children below school age in Helsinki.

The analytic process of ethnography is iterative and starts during fieldwork, although more formalized analysis often takes place after withdrawal and intellectual distancing from the field (Aull Davies 2012). At this stage, the other authors started taking a greater part in the analysis and dialogical reflection. We started by systematically selecting all sections of the field notes and interview transcripts that related to playgrounds and (lack of) contact and contextual descriptions (e.g., of the material environment) using Atlas.ti software. Our abductive analysis built on literature about intergroup contact theory and informal segregation. With this focus in mind, we analyzed the different practices and norms producing informal segregation in playground settings and identified key themes. First, we drew out the relevant phenomena by developing analytic categories (e.g., “absence of contact,”“avoiding contact,”“nonnormative behavior”), rereading the data alongside relevant literature and refining our research questions (Hammersley and Atkinson 2019). Then we organized the data under more general categories, compared them, and developed themes that responded best to our research questions (Hammersley and Atkinson 2019).

Results

We begin by presenting the findings on how normative parenting and related rhythms are (re)produced and how they serve to (re)construct informal segregation both temporally and spatially. We then turn to informal segregation as it unfolds in everyday interactions, and we illustrate how it is (re)constructed through the norms and practices of outgroup avoidance and ingroup seeking.

Discussion

This ethnographic study has described how informal segregation persists and is (re)produced through norms and practices among mothers on the public playgrounds of ethnically diverse neighborhoods in Finland. On the one hand, the playground as an institutional space and the visiting mothers themselves (re)produced the cultural norms of “good parenting,” generating inclusion for some mothers and exclusion for others. This became apparent through the asynchrony of visiting times on the playground—across the school year, the different groups did not visit the space at the same time. This reduced opportunities for contact and maintained segregation. On the other hand, during the summer, when mothers from different ethnic/racial groups were copresent on the playground, their intergroup avoidance—which was reciprocated—and seeking of ingroup contacts (re)produced intergroup norms, which reinforced group boundaries and maintained informal segregation. These empirical findings contribute to the ongoing social psychological discussion of “informal segregation” in several ways.

First, a large body of literature has demonstrated how informal segregation is constructed by avoiding copresence with outgroup members (Clack et al. 2005; Dixon and Durrheim 2003; Priest et al. 2014). Our study demonstrated similar spatial practices but also showed how mothers used other means, like body posture or averting their eyes, to avoid contact (see Stephan 2014). Queuing, as an everyday practice during which different group members come close together and cannot navigate freely in space, made these practices visible. Our example of a mother reproaching her own child in a queue to avoid intergroup contact illustrated the lengths taken to shun an almost unavoidable intergroup contact situation to maintain the ethnic/racial order (see also Cahill 1987). In previous informal segregation literature, however, these kinds of practices have usually gone unnoticed.

Second, few studies on informal segregation have analyzed norms. The sparse literature has demonstrated how clustering in space (e.g., repeatedly sitting with ingroup members) reproduces the norms defining intergroup interactions, thus strengthening informal segregation (e.g., Alexander and Tredoux 2010; Thomas 2005). Our research contributes to this prior literature by showing in detail how the fine-tuned process of normative behavior is negotiated interactively between groups. Our analysis shows that (re)producing the norm of maintaining group boundaries required constant reciprocal work between mothers from different ethnic/racial groups on the playgrounds. To perform their part in this choreography of maintaining informal segregation, they needed to be extremely aware of each other. Thus, as Isabella explained, it was a delicate, gradual process in which the cues of normative intergroup behavior were taken from the copresent others, often unintentionally (see Ridgeway and Correll 2006). At times, this process can be influenced by pluralistic ignorance: individuals may interpret others as feeling and thinking differently from themselves even though their behavior is similar (Miller and McFarland 1987). Therefore, analyzing whether and how different groups use the same space is not enough; a more discreet analysis of the interactive nature of intergroup norms is needed for a deeper understanding of informal segregation.

Third, in addition to intergroup norms, we showed that cultural norms further fed into informal segregation. While playgrounds were officially open to all, the space was dominated by hegemonic Finnish parenting norms (see also Byrne and Wolch 2009). The parenting of minority groups was therefore often observed and adjudged deviant by majority Finnish mothers. Performing these hegemonic norms was particularly demanding for minority group mothers because of their different cultural backgrounds and resources compared to local Finnish mothers and because of the constant threat of being othered (Peltola 2016). Indeed, all members of visible minorities seemed to face the same threat, regardless of their length of residence or familiarity with local norms in Finland, as in Layla's case when queuing. Thus, our research points to the need to further consider how cultural norms may affect informal segregation as they define the expected behavior in a particular space and role (e.g., as a mother on a playground). On this basis, we advocate a more socially situated investigation of the occurrence and nonoccurrence of contact.

Fourth, our study builds on previous research on real-life segregation in social and material environments (Dixon et al. 2005) by pointing to the importance of participants’ roles and their preexisting relationships. Previous work has tended to begin from the copresence of strangers in public spaces, asking how and why segregation is reproduced. Our work takes a different approach, examining how the roles that people occupy (in this case, mothering) shape the ways in which they use a public space and hence afford or constrain opportunities for contact. Furthermore, we found that despite the playgrounds’ nature as semipublic spaces where visitors are meant to socialize with each other, their actual use often involved premeditated meetings with existing friends, offering the mothers relaxed peer contact for the relatively brief time spent on the playground (see Al Ramiah et al. 2015; Paolini et al. 2022). Thus, our results support previous research findings that outgroup avoidance derives not only from intergroup processes but also from personal preferences or passivity (Mackinnon et al. 2011; Paolini et al. 2022).

Finally, thanks to our methodological approach to the microecology of social relations (Dixon et al. 2008) of the mothers on the playgrounds, our study has many strengths. Studying intergroup contact in the temporal and spatial fluidity of real life is a demanding methodological task (Dixon et al. 2008), to which we responded with a unique combination of follow-up interviews and participant observations over almost a year. This enabled us to produce a “thick description” of informal segregation both as it happens and as it is described, understood, and experienced by those present. Because our interviews also included people who did not visit the playgrounds, we were able to include perspectives from those who were not present. Our long engagement in the field also allowed us to follow temporal changes in the playground's use and the behavioral patterns it hosted. This allowed us to take account of and incorporate the different processes influencing practices of informal segregation (i.e., cultural and intergroup norms and microecological behavior; see Bettencourt et al. 2019; Swyngedouw 2013). While playgrounds followed the city's strategy of promoting equality and most interlocutors explicitly had tolerant views of other ethnicities, such norms had evidently not become everyday practice. These insights could not have been gained using surveys and experimental methods (see McKeown and Dixon 2017).

Our analysis allows us to draw novel practical implications here. First, to facilitate contact, friendship formation, and social integration, policy makers need to consider how local social, institutional, and cultural norms and practices may prevent the participation of mothers and their children. Second, removing barriers to service use (e.g., making playground schedules more flexible) would indirectly promote accessibility for people with irregular daily routines arising from differences in culture, family situation, or other factors known to disproportionately affect ethnic minorities. Furthermore, the role of playground instructors in communicating norms of parenting and appropriate playground behavior suggests that training these professionals in diversity awareness and community inclusion could help implement more inclusive intergroup norms on the playground.

Some critical reflection on our study is necessary. First, the data were generated in collaboration between the interlocutors, interviewees, and the first author, whose gender, parenthood, and race/ethnicity could facilitate open discussion (e.g., on challenges as a mother) but also restrain it (e.g., by being perceived as a White majority member or an authority as a researcher). The researcher also participated with her being and action in the social world she was studying (see Hammersley and Atkinson 2019). The fact that the researcher visited the playground mostly during its active hours, for example, reproduced the same normative schedule that we observed the nuclear group and the instructors followed. Second, from a critical race theory perspective, our observations on cultural norms could be interpreted to represent color-blind racism (Bonilla-Silva 2018). While the normative practices on the playground had many similarities with Walton’s (2021)“habits of whiteness” maintaining the racial domination in diverse neighborhoods in the United States, our research, however, also shows that most mothers, regardless of their own and others' ethnic background, found it complicated to form new relationships on the playgrounds due to cultural norms.

Our study naturally has some potential limitations that future research should address. The data were collected from only four playgrounds (focusing on one) in two specific neighborhoods, and the interlocutors and interviewees were mostly recruited on playgrounds and in other activity spaces. Thus, the data do not represent the entire diversity of mothers in the neighborhood—they exclude, for example, mothers who rarely went out. In this study, too, we focused on ethnic groups and gathered little information on the participants’ social class. Therefore, future research should more deeply consider the intersection of class and ethnicity in relation to informal segregation. In addition, the interviews were conducted only in languages in which the first author is fluent. Although we do not believe this limited our data too much (all mothers who wished could participate in the follow-up interviews), it did rule out part of the target group on the playground in the summer. Finally, there were only a few fathers on the playgrounds, which impeded interpreting how gender shaped the interaction patterns.

To conclude, the evident informal segregation on the playground among mothers of different ethnic/racial groups was (re)produced through asynchrony in their physical presence in the space—partly derived from cultural norms—and in fine-tuned normative interactional processes of avoiding outgroup contacts and staying among other ingroup mothers when present in the same space. Thus informal segregation is not just (re)produced by discriminative behavior or avoidance but also through everyday normative practices that often lead to self-segregation by both groups.