Research project Our daily lives are increasingly fragmented across different locations, for example, between primary and secondary homes. Technological advancements, changing work and employment practices, such as freelancing and working from home, have meant that the home and other places besides the traditional workplace are becoming more central to work life for many people. The goals for the project are to better understand emerging space of work and mobility in connection to second-home tourism.
This research project focuses on the increasing spatial fragmentation of daily life in Sweden, particularly between primary residences and second homes. The former spatial division between these places connected to work life and leisure is becoming increasingly blurred. The project aims to explore how this fragmentation impacts local and regional economic development, innovation, and work life in different spatial contexts.
FORMAS
Project Leader
Dominic Power, Professor, Department of Human Geography, Stockholm University
Johan Jansson, Associate Professor ,
Department of Human Geography ,
Uppsala University
The economy increasingly happens outside of our primary workplace. Technology, changing gender relations and family forms, and new patterns of freelance and home working have meant that for many the home and other sites than the traditional workplace are increasingly central. But working from home does not just mean from the primary residence. Second homes are a widespread phenomenon in Sweden and working elsewhere often means from your second home. From an earlier idea of the ‘fritidshus’ (holiday home) they have become used for longer and more varied periods. With remote working enabled by technology and the retreat from Monday to Friday work life that was pushed by the pandemic alongside the individualisation of work, second homes have become places of work as well. Thus, second homes can act as work and business spaces that connect and benefit both the countryside and the city.
There are about 600,000 second homes in Sweden, meaning a yearly mobility of several million people for extended periods of time. Despite the scale of this multi-local living, research and policy has simply treated these ‘trips’ as part of a wider tourism industry, and at worst unsustainable tourism that drains local resources. Against this background, this project aims to better understand what second homes mean for sustainable development, and to better understand how second-home mobility fits into worklife. The project’s focus research areas are the analysis of patterns of regional development and second home usage; regional cases where second homes are prominent; places where workers from particular sectors are overrepresented in second home ownership.
