| Summary: | The dissertation accounts for construction of place in mining communities as they undergo a major urban transformation. In the 2010s, urban centres in the northern Sweden mining communities of Gällivare and Kiruna entered a new execution phase of a large-scale transformation precipitated by ground subsidence caused by mining activities, a transformation that continues. The ambition to make the transition socially sustainable and contribute to more attractive communities resulted in research projects focused on these aspects. The aim of this dissertation is to describe and analyse how place is constructed in established mining communities in transition through the following research questions: How is place constructed in dialogues on social sustainability and attractiveness? How do people of different age groups, professions and gender construct place in established mining communities in transition? What are the possibilities and limitations of different research methods in relation to including residents’ perspectives in the transformation process? The overall theoretical standpoint of this dissertation is that place is socially constructed: place is made by people discussing and describing it, by discourses that are produced, reproduced and challenged in social groups beyond individual standpoints. Residents’ thoughts and ideas about place are an important part of what the communities are, were and will become, along with their reflexive relationship with their place of residence and thoughts on their own and other peoples’ future in the respective communities (See Lefebvre, 1991, Halegua, 2020). By reflexive relationship with place I am referring to actions where residents consider risk, think about their future, define what makes their life more meaningful and reflect upon changes in their environment; local community is one of the levels of these thoughts, attitudes and feelings. Five studies were conducted to investigate construction of place in the transiting mining communities of Kiruna and Gällivare ...
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