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This chapter examines the evolving labour regime associated with the establishment of Northvolt’s battery factory in Skellefteå, Sweden, with particular attention to its socioeconomic impacts on the local community and migrant workers. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, the authors explore the rapid development of temporary housing solutions, the differentiation and disciplining of labour, and the challenges migrant workers face in adapting to the local context. The study illustrates how global green investments are reshaping local labour markets and housing policies, resulting in precarious and tightly regulated living and working conditions for migrant workers. These findings provide critical insights into the wider implications of green investments for labour mobility and social reproduction in peripheral regions.

This research note contains the third update of the research program “A promised land? Drivers, challenges and opportunities related to the (green) industrialization of Northern Sweden,” (nr. M22-0029) awarded by the Swedish Riksbankens Jubileumsfond’s in 2022. The document summarizes work in progress and is updated annually in different versions according to the requirements of the program. 

This interdisciplinary program aims to understand the economic, social, and political challenges and opportunities of the ongoing industrial transformation in northern Sweden. A key element of the program is to identify drivers, obstacles, and preconditions in a historical, present, and forward-looking process-perspective. 

In the second half of the twentieth century, the car industry became a lightning rod for debates about human contributions to climate change. Widespread motorisation galvanised the green movements of the 1960s and 1970s, regulators increasingly demanded the use of pollution and climate mitigation technologies, and carmakers responded to this changing consumer and regulatory environment by gradually observing stricter emissions standards and innovating away from combustible engines at the turn of the millennium. This chapter traces the arc of the relationship between car manufacturing and climate change through a business historical lens, from the development of internal combustion engines and their alternatives to the political economy of an energy transition and the decision to prioritise electric vehicles. This analysis aims to lay a foundation for further historical research on car manufacturing and climate change.

Det krävs en bred och oberoende analys av experter med olika kompetens. Låt den oberoende forskningen vid svenska lärosäten vara med och bidra med kunskap i syfte att öka sannolikheten för att den har typen av investeringar i framtiden ska bli lyckade ur ett klimat, samhällsekonomiskt, demokratiskt och socialt hållbart perspektiv

Regeringens ointresse för människors livsvillkor i kämpande kommuner riskerar att underminera tron på den gröna omställningen, skriver tre forskare.

This paper uses register data and open vacancy data to determine if green industries require different skills than other employers. This is done by focusing on how the entry of the battery producer Northvolt changed the labour demand when establishing in Skellefteå (Sweden). Using data on all vacancies in Sweden 2016–2023 we analyse the skill- and knowledge demand in Northvolt's job ads and compare that to the labour demand at the local, regional and national level. In terms of occupations, we find only minor tendencies towards a higher demand of higher-skilled jobs compared to incumbent local employers, but an increase of service work and a reinforcement of the local manual work specialization. Using language models, we combine the vacancies with a scheme of skills and knowledge from the ESCO-taxonomy. Interestingly, Northvolt deviates in both the skill- and knowledge requirements compared to similar jobs in the rest of the country. This especially concerns a greater emphasis on information, collaboration and communication skills in contrast to other employers who stress manufacturing experience. Despite these skill-specific differences, our experimental approach finds little evidence that the entry spurred a significant diversification and upgrading of the regional labour market.

Regional conditions that smoothen the process of creative destruction and reduce adjustment costs are key transformative features. The aim of this article is therefore to first assess the regional presence of low- and high-demand occupations, and second, to assess the likelihood that workers in low-demand occupations will make productive changes to high-demand occupations in their region. Using matched employer-employee data on Sweden for the period 2015-2019, we calculate the regional relatedness density for all occupations and then assess whether this 'regional opportunity space' provides labour market channels for workers to move from low- to high-demand occupations in the region. Our findings reveal stark regional differences in matching between low- and high-demand occupations that transcend the regional functional hierarchy. Subsequent logit regressions support the notion that regions with a high density of related high-demand occupations provide labour market channels that increase the likelihood of productive change among exposed workers. The influence of these structural regional features outweighs that of the mere presence of high-demand occupations as well as both the size and diversity of the labour market.

This study contributes to a deeper understanding of planning rationales in a so-called ‘left-behind place’ confronted with the opportunities and challenges posed by a ‘green’ mega-project. Through an exploration of the planning stories articulated by planners and policymakers in interviews, and formal planning narratives found in official statements and documents, this analysis uncovers how planning is spatially situated and entangled with configurations of agency, power, and contested understandings of needs and problems. Drawing on Throgmorton’s (2003) conception of planning as a form of persuasive storytelling, and Sandercock’s (2003) emphasis on the emotional and political dimensions of planning stories, the study highlights how these stories are not merely descriptive but actively shape planning outcomes and what is seen as possible and desirable. The empirical findings underscore the fragility of planning narratives grounded in entrepreneurial logics, which often limit planning’s capacity for imagining and pursuing futures beyond corporate interests. Building on critiques of urban boosterism and place marketing, the article argues for planning stories that make space for municipalities and citizens to articulate structural inequalities and everyday struggles. It calls for planning stories and narratives that hold global firms accountable and foreground the material and social resources at stake—people, ecosystems, infrastructure, and welfare. Without such stories, planning risks reproducing spatial inequalities and perpetuating neocolonial patterns of uneven development.

Using a broad range of materials (media and interviews), we analyse the development of three green megaprojects in the two northernmost regions of Sweden. We find support for the presence of a strong ideological fantasy tied to a few “green heroes”, supporting the notion that the investments are the ultimate answer not only to climate crisis but also to the territory’s perceived left-behindness. The symbolic construction of the fantasy also contributes to the production of killjoys through marginalizing and feminizing opposition to the megaprojects. Our analysis thereby points to the importance of a feminist intervention and critique of the neoliberal ideology that frames green megaprojects.

This research note contains an update of the research program “A promised land? Drivers, challenges and opportunities related to the (green) industrialization of Northern Sweden,” (nr. M22-0029) awarded by the Swedish Riksbankens Jubileumsfond’s in 2022. The document summarizes work in progress and is updated annually in different versions according to the requirements of the program. 

This interdisciplinary program aims to understand the economic, social, and political challenges and opportunities of the ongoing industrial transformation in northern Sweden. A key element of the program is to identify drivers, obstacles, and preconditions in a historical, present, and forward-looking process-perspective.