The CODIC project investigates a classical welfare paradox, namely the persistence of systematic and “durable inequalities” in both Nordic and market-oriented welfare regimes. Rather than reducing this paradox to a question of class background or personal resources, we seek to consider the impact of social organization and integration of schools and associated welfare systems. Whether schools promote or limit welfare and opportunity depend on the practices in which they engage, their responsiveness to local communities, and how they are integrated with other welfare institutions. CODIC is based on two project objectives: (1) a comparative study on the role of schools and associated welfare agencies for social inclusion and wellbeing of their students in three Nordic and one US city, and (2) a Ph.D. training and intellectual exchange in the comparative study of educational and social welfare institutions.

The project's extensive and broad data includes register data, policy documents, interviews with teachers, welfare workers, municipal administrators and local leadership, as well as quantitative and qualitative data on children’s self-perception, social integration and psychosocial wellbeing. This unique dataset opens up for investigations how agents across different levels of the school system negotiate and make relevant social categories of gender, class, ethnicity and disability, and how these categories structure problem definitions, opportunity structures and social practice. Consequences of school segregation are addressed in the school studies, organizational analysis, and in the handling of social inclusion during the Covid-19 pandemic in the four school systems.

CODIC is supported by a 4 year project grant from The Norwegian  Research Council (NFR, 2023-2027) and a 2 year grant from the Peder Saether Center of Advanced Research (2023-24). The Ph.D training part of the project is based on a collaboration between NTNU and UC Berkeley with partners at University of Bergen and University of Agder in Norway. 

CODIC is both part of the research group Social Welfare and Inequality at the Dept. of Sociology and Political Science at NTNU and Center for Research on Social Inclusion in School and Childhood (Gemini project at NTNU Social Research). CODIC is a continuation of previous NTNU research on unequal childhood in the Nordic countries and based on a long-lasting university-municipality collaboration between the Nordic cities of Trondheim, Tampere and Norrköping.

Click here to read the project plan 

• PhD course in Berkeley and at NTNU in comparative educational sociologi (December 2023)
• Field work and data collection in Norrköping (February 2024)
• Workshop in Tampere, 22-24 May 2024 (Nordic University-Municipality Collaboration)