Mathieu Steijn has been awarded a prestigious Veni research grant by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). With this grant, he will investigate how community spaces – such as sports clubs, community centres and libraries – can help improve opportunities for children growing up in disadvantaged families.
Inequality of opportunity is increasing in the Netherlands. Whether children are able to achieve upward social mobility later in life depends to a large extent on the social relationships they develop. So far, research and public policy have mainly focused on neighbourhood composition: who lives where? According to Steijn, however, that is only part of the story. Social relationships are not created simply because people live near one another—they are formed because people meet. His research therefore shifts the focus to the social infrastructure of neighbourhoods: the places where people from different backgrounds come together.
Steijn will identify the community spaces that connect people from different socioeconomic backgrounds. He will then examine how these meeting places have influenced social mobility across previous generations. The findings will provide new insights for policymakers seeking to create neighbourhoods that offer better opportunities for future generations.
“This grant comes at an important time,” says Steijn. “Inequality of opportunity is increasing, and we now know that the neighbourhood in which someone grows up plays a major role in shaping their future prospects. At the same time, we still do not fully understand which aspects of neighbourhoods make the biggest difference. This project will help us identify those factors, enabling more targeted and effective policy interventions.”
About the Veni Grant
The Veni grant is a personal research grant awarded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) to recently graduated PhD researchers with an outstanding research proposal. Worth up to €320,000, the grant provides recipients with three years to further develop their own line of research. Through the Veni programme, NWO supports innovative, curiosity-driven scientific research.