Challenging the Stereotypes of "Bad" Schools and "Bad" Neighborhoods: The Voices of Middle Eastern Youths from Swedish Suburbs In the 1960s, the Swedish Government implemented a housing program called "Miljonprogrammet" or the "Million Program" which aimed to create one million apartments to address the rising shortage of residences that accompanied the industrial growth of Swedish cities. At this time there was both a shortage of adequate residential spaces in general and modern spaces in particular to meet the projected growing numbers of working-class residents that were relocating from rural areas to cities (Ericsson, Molina and Ristilammi, 2002). By the early 1970s several things happened, two factors in particular were that industrial growth slowed and not as many persons moved from rural areas to cities as predicted leaving many of these apartments uninhabited. As immigrant populations began to increase, they were often relocated to these uninhabited apartments. Given negative portrayals in the Swedish news media, the neighborhoods created by the Miljonprogram were characterized as "unfriendly" and "uninviting" almost from the very beginning (Sernhede, 2002). As Sweden has progressed into the 21st century, the neighborhoods created by the Miljonprogram are still characterized as "unfriendly" and "uninviting" spaces by outsiders to these communities. Insiders, however, represent these communities in more complex and nuanced terms. For example, news media representations still generally characterize the Swedish suburbs as spaces of pathology, brutality, and deficiency (Elsrud 2008). In contrast, teenagers from Middle Eastern backgrounds speak in limited and specific terms about what's "wrong" with their neighborhoods; they speak in broader and more general terms about what's "right" with the suburbs. Even more, teenagers from the suburbs believe there to be no more, maybe even less, criminality found in the suburbs than that found in communities located in or near the center cities of Sweden. Additionally, Middle Eastern teens describe lower amounts of alcohol abuse and drug usage, higher amounts of friendships across a diversity of ethnic backgrounds, and lower amounts of bullying in their schools and communities. Based upon interviews and field observations across three suburban communities with teenagers from a variety of Middle Eastern ethnic and national origins, this paper sheds new light upon the so-called "unfriendly" and "uninviting" spaces of the suburbs. The theoretical frame that will figure prominently in this paper is Critical Race/Ethnicity Theory.