This thesis is based on the demise of industry that has led to a search for new solutions for the survival of smaller communities traditionally dependent on industrial production. In two local industrial communities in central and northern Sweden, Surahammar and Timrå, industrial dependency has gradually been replaced by a dependency on immigration, largely from the neighboring cities of Västerås and Sundsvall. In the changed order of these local communities, old and new inhabitants have had to negotiate positions in order to co-exist. The objective of the thesis is to present how old and new inhabitants relate to and are attached to the local community as a place in which they reside and live their lives. In focus is an interest in the local identity construction of the inhabitants, i.e. how they identify with the place in which they dwell and live their everyday lives, with and in reference to each other and the outside world. Another concern relates to just how different local options for identification can be for individuals and for collective groups of people.

Adopting a phenomenological and constructivist perspective, I regard local place as something that both old and new inhabitants are shaped by and shape in a collective process based on contrasts. The analysis is based on empirical data gathered during several years of fieldwork in the studied communities. The empirical data mainly consists of interviews and participant observations with old and new inhabitants in Surahammar and Timrå. Moreover, biographical literature, newspaper articles and data retrieved from the Internet have contributed important insights into how the local place is experienced and valued among the different groups of inhabitants. The thesis recognises the values and symbols that old and new inhabitants agree upon and that often result in spatial attachments. In addition, ideological, social and cultural differences are depicted as factors that shape a place as old and new inhabitants articulate local attachment and identification based on different grounds, needs and dreams.