Figure - available from: European Journal of Population
This content is subject to copyright. Terms and conditions apply.
‘Non-European’ factor: ethnic-socioeconomic segregation at all scales. a Brussels. b Antwerp. c Liege. Note The graphs on the left represent indicators’ loadings on the factor as a function of scale (i.e. number of nearest neighbours); they provide a synthetic view of the factor in respect to its socioeconomic features as the scale varies. The maps on the right side depict the spatial distribution of grids’ factor scores in the three cities. In particular, they allow the location of spots with extreme values, where the factors’ features are most pronounced. Source: Census 2011 data; authors calculations
Source publication
Segregation may have profound effects when it is paired with an accumulation of inequalities. This is namely the case when ethnic and socioeconomic segregation overlap. Few studies in Europe have, however, addressed the relationship between ethnic and socioeconomic segregation in a comprehensive manner. This paper first aims at investigating the in...
Citations
... Similar observations were made in Kenya, where ethnic divisions during British rule, marginalized Africans and concentrated minorities in neglected areas (Jones, 2020). This trapped residents in deprived neighborhoods with limited opportunities (Costa & De Valk, 2018;Obudho, 1997). ...
... At the same time, research consistently links ethnic segregation to access to services and neighborhood selection. Studies from Brazil, South Africa, Estonia, Belgium, and England and Wales corroborate this association (Carvalho & Netto, 2023;Järv et al., 2021;Gradín, 2019;Costa & De Valk, 2018;Harris et al., 2017). ...
... The consequences of ethnic segregation are detrimental, fostering societal divisions and limiting access to resources and quality of life for marginalized communities (Jimmy et al., 2020;Costa & De Valk, 2018). Our findings reveal a stark ethnic divide in Nairobi City, rooted in its colonial legacy. ...
In modern times, cities around the world have grappled with the challenges of racial and ethnic segregation. In Nairobi city, with its diverse ethnic makeup, there is widening inequalities and emerging patterns of ethnic segregation, where the five main ethnic groups - Kamba, Luo, Kikuyu, Luhyia, and Kisii - experience varying levels of spatial concentration. This study analysed the spatial patterns of ethnic segregation in Nairobi, using geocoded questionnaire data from the 2019 Kenya population and housing census data. We used the Index of Dissimilarity in STATA software and Geo-segregation Analyzer and Anselin’s Local Moran I method in GIS to map ethnic segregation patterns. Our findings uncovered a striking socio-spatial divide based on ethnicity. Anselin Local Moran’s I indicators further pinpointed areas with the highest levels of segregation and spatial clustering of specific ethnic groups. These findings offer crucial insights for urban planners and policymakers. By pinpointing areas experiencing the most severe spatial segregation, our research could inform spatially targeted interventions and resource allocation. This could inform policies that foster inclusivity, reduce spatial inequalities, and build a more equitable and socially cohesive city.
... The relationship between ethnic and socio-economic segregation remains underexplored in empirical research, despite evidence suggesting connections between these phenomena (Petsimeris and Rimoldi 2015). For instance, Costa and de Valk (2018) found that individuals with migrant backgrounds are disproportionately concentrated in socioeconomically marginalized neighborhoods. These spatial patterns of disadvantage can be traced back to the transition from an industrial to a service-oriented economy, which has significantly exacerbated social and spatial inequalities in European cities, disproportionately affecting migrants (Kesteloot et al. 2006;Morlicchio 2020). ...
... This economic shift has often relegated migrants to lower-skilled, lower-paying jobs, typically located in more affordable but less desirable neighborhoods. Moreover, the continued demand for unskilled labor in Western cities has attracted new migrants, who often settle in these deprived areas (Costa and de Valk 2018). ...
... When socio-economically marginalized neighborhoods are characterized by high concentrations of migrant populations, the intersection of ethnic and socio-economic segregation can create a compounded form of disadvantage. This intensified inequality deepens the spatial separation of social groups within urban environments, exacerbating overall socio-spatial disparities (Costa and de Valk 2018). ...
In recent decades, rising social disparities in European cities have structured new forms of urban inequalities. Employing an innovative analysis approach based on statistical, geographical, and spatial methods, this paper aims to explore the social geography of population groups in Liverpool, Manchester, and Newcastle upon Tyne by examining how the spatial distribution of socio-economic groups intersects with urban settlements of the resident foreign population. The study addresses methodological challenges in segregation measurement while shedding light on existing spatial patterns of vulnerable groups and emerging trajectories of residential segregation at the metropolitan scale, utilising the most recent UK Census data.
... For decades, Belgium has experienced stark inequities in educational outcomes (Timmerman et al., 2014;Verstegen, 1997). High levels of social stratification are linked to early tracking and social selection in schools along class lines, growing residential segregation, and the universal school choice policy (Costa & De Valk, 2018;Dupriez & Verhoeven, 2023). These inequities are particularly pronounced for immigrant children, including in secondary school completion rates (Fleischmann et al., 2011;Nicaise et al., 2021;UNIA, 2018;Vernimmen, 2024). ...
... While the neighbourhood effects study of Andersson and Malmberg (2015) illustrates how the impact of context upon educational outcomes depends on the scale considered, we argue that the neighbourhood delineation here is much more detailed than hitherto has been done in the Belgian context. Yet, Belgian studies illustrate the relevance of scale (Costa & de Valk, 2018;Imeraj et al., 2018) and caution against generalising our findings; important elements in the theoretical construct of neighbourhood and neighbourhood perception remain difficult to straightforwardly link with concepts such as social control, role models, or peer pressure. Ideally, we would elaborate the proposed multilevel models and include a wide array of factors at various levels. ...
Research has made significant contributions to our understanding of ethnic disparities in educational attainment, revealing amongst others the importance of parental and residential characteristics. Mixed empirical results, however, challenge the interpretation of why some ethnic groups face more difficulties in educational success than others, upholding contextual effects as a contested and inconclusive topic. This case study scrutinises the contextual underpinnings of ethnic diversity in the educational attainment of adolescents from various ethnic populations in Belgium's largest cities. Using full population individual‐level longitudinal census data (1991–2001), stratified multilevel ordinal models focus on the heterogeneous role of household characteristics – parental education and household composition – and neighbourhood characteristics – ethnic density, coethnic representation and deprivation – in young native and ethnic minority populations. While this Belgian case study shows that parental education and residential environment contribute to educational outcomes of all young adults in similar ways, it also points at two ethnic‐specific dynamics. First, contextual socioeconomic advantages are accumulated to a greater extent among native adolescents. Second, coethnic residential concentration shows a positive association with educational attainment for native and European‐origin children only. This paper reveals how the spatial separation of ethnic communities fosters differential opportunities for educational success, in particular for the most segregated population groups. If we want to better understand the complexities of native‐origin and minority youth embarking on differential educational trajectories, our study echoes the need for considering various sociospatial contexts in which people of different ethnic communities interact.
... These new frameworks all have in common the explicit focus on intersecting temporal and contextual dimensions, moving beyond the mere focus on static and single-scale measurements of segregation and underscoring the intricate determinants and selection mechanisms in different life domains and over generations, crucial in understanding why levels and patterns of segregation have been slow to change. The persistence of residential segregation of the rich and the poor in European and American cities (Haandrikman et al., 2023;Quillian & Lagrange, 2016;Tammaru et al., 2016), the overlap of socioeconomic and ethnic concentration patterns (Costa & de Valk, 2018a;Harris et al., 2017), and the similarity of socioeconomic and ethnic contexts of individuals and their parents (Gustafsson et al., 2017;Pais, 2017;Sharkey, 2008Sharkey, , 2013, clearly illustrate how processes and outcomes of socioeconomic and ethnic sorting intersect over (biographic and processual) time, having important repercussions for the future of social and ethnic stratification of European society and beyond. ...
... This spatial polarisation roughly coincides with the territorial expansion of nineteenth-century Brussels before World War 1 (inner-part) and the later process of urbanisation (outer-part), illustrated in Fig. 1. Despite variation at municipal and neighbourhood level (as detailed by Costa & de Valk, 2018b;Otavova et al., 2023), the most deprived and ethnically dense neighbourhoods are predominantly located within inner-city areas, particularly in the continuous zone around the historical city centre where more than 40% of working-age residents fall into the low-income bracket, and high-income earners are notably scarcethe so-called poor croissant 1 -, whereas more distinct concentrations of wealthy and native-born/White-European persons are found in the outer-city, where rental prices are generally higher than in the inner-city (Costa & de Valk, 2018aImeraj et al., 2018a). Labour migrant descendants and newcomers from outside the 'Walled World' 2 have settled and continue to do so in the central former industrial Poor areas also known as the "poor croissant" encompass parts of the centre, Schaarbeek, Saint-Josse, Molenbeek, and Anderlecht; the crescent reflects the uneven spatial distribution of social inequalities and housing/rental prices across the Brussels territory. ...
Spatial assimilation theory asserts that immigrants’ socioeconomic progress leads to residential adaptation and integration. This association has proven robust in USA and European urban areas through much of the twentieth century, but drastic change of ethnic and class compositions yet persistent (neighbourhood) inequality in the urban landscape urge us to reconsider the dynamic interaction between stability and change. In this study, we investigate to what extent education shapes residential mobility differently for young adults with varying ethnic and social origins. Focussing on Brussels, we use multinomial logistic regressions on linked longitudinal population-based censuses from 1991 and 2001 and register data for the period 2001–2006. Analyses show that dispersal away from poor inner-city neighbourhoods appears least likely for the offspring of poor low-educated non-Western households, regardless of their own educational attainment. While our approach roughly confirms traditional arguments of socio-spatial integration, it also reveals how educational success generates opportunities to escape poor neighbourhoods for some but not for others. With this, it points at the subtle ways in which factors and mechanisms in traditional spatial assimilation theory affect residential behaviour of young adults over their life course, at the intersection of specific locales, ethnic groups, social classes and generations.
... Another conclusion of this research is that non-European migrants are not only concentrated in areas that are predominantly inhabited by migrants, but that they are dispersed across these countries. Costa and de Valk (2018) conclude that in the urban agglomerations of Brussels, Antwerp and Liège in Belgium, there has been a spatial isolation of poor and economically disadvantaged migrant groups who inhabit these cities in greater concentrations, which is particularly pronounced in Brussels. Malmberg et al. (2018), who analysed ethnic segregation in Sweden, concluded that despite the increase in settlements inhabited only by migrants of non-European origin and mostly located in metropolitan areas, there has been no increase in the level of segregation. ...
Studying ethnic diversity and ethnic segregation is becoming increasingly important in ethnically heterogeneous societies, as ethnic diversity forms the backbone of minority policies in these countries. North Macedonia has witnessed a rise in ethnic heterogeneity evident in the growing number of ethnic groups and modalities recorded in recent censuses. This study explores the dynamics of ethnic diversity and segregation at smaller territorial levels, emphasising disparities between urban and rural areas,
during the period between the 1994 and 2021 censuses. Additionally, the paper examines the impact of various socio-historical, socio-economic, and demographic factors on these dynamics. The analysis of the research will be based on the application of the entropy index, which shows the spatial variability of diversity and the interaction between different ethnic groups. The outcome of this research provides a deeper insight into dynamics of ethnic diversity at a small spatial scale and the factors that have contributed to it.
... This mainly concerns urban development and the housing market segmentation, resulting in cities with a prosperous centre and poorer peripheries or, the opposite, a poor centre with affluent suburbs (Cassiers & Kesteloot, 2012). Antwerp is an example of the former, and data shows a clear clustering of migrants and socioeconomic status in Belgian cities (Costa & de Valk, 2018). In other words, neighbourhoods have socioeconomic profiles. ...
Early strategies of researching readers turned scholars to hermeneutic shortcuts like Iser’s ‘implied’ or Fish’s ‘informed’ reader. However, these shortcuts cannot be seen as studying ‘actual’ readers. One approach to studying actual readers has been turning to empirical methods. However, even though the institutions that do these types of research are located in culturally complex cities, the process of participant selection in empirical studies often does not take the city’s make-up into account. Therefore, this article aims to present a participant sampling strategy for empirical reader response research with Antwerp as the location for a study of urban readers in a European context. Opting for a qualitative approach and thus a purposeful sampling strategy and taking the hyper-diverse nature of major cities into account, we suggest using social milieu rather than traditional descriptive markers by recruiting from different neighbourhoods. This as neighbourhoods have their own culture and play an important role in a person’s identity. Turning to local libraries for participant recruitment means a step towards studying actual readers and will lead to a deeper insight into the effects of texts on readers. Moreover, apart from obtaining a richer variety of idiosyncratic responses, this can also result in a deeper understanding of (sub)cultural responses to narratives.
... Property prices are influenced by extrinsic and intrinsic factors, such as, e.g., maintenance state and quality of materials [2], comfort [3], safety [4][5][6], energy efficiency [7][8][9][10][11][12], social status of its owner [13] and the surroundings [14][15][16][17], environmental, historical or architectural amenities [18]. In the same way, real estate market is also conditioned by contextual socioeconomic factors [19,20] and the variation in the mode of real estate goods appreciation [21,22]. These aspects favour the use of advanced hedonic pricing models based on the survey and statistical analysis of real estate market data. ...
Housing prices are influenced by extrinsic and intrinsic factors. This study aims to highlight the economic impact of the perceived landscape on single-family houses prices in a Spanish Mediterranean urban area (Marbella). Considering the landscape an important added value in real estate markets, this study also explores the landscape elements that contribute the most to the value of housing. A particularly positive influence of mixed views (urban elements and Mediterranean scrub) and sea views is detected in the analysis. Sea views are highly requested in the local housing market, but due to the graded topographical layout of Marbella, it is not very difficult to have sea views for houses. The low importance of views on natural land areas is worth noting when one of the attractions of this municipality is that of a highly valued Mediterranean natural environment. Views on the old town centre are somewhere in between: although the old town centre is highly regarded, with a generally good state of preservation, the sampled properties have poorer quality perspectives, with reduced visual basins and views centred on the foreground, usually the houses opposite.
... Nonetheless, these studies suggest a close link between inequality and segregation in various European countries, although absolute levels of income segregation are much lower than in the United States (Musterd 2005;Quillian and Lagrange 2016). For example, in a study of 12 European capitals, Musterd et al. (2017) found growing levels of income segregation between top and bottom income quintiles in Oslo and Stockholm, but decreasing segregation in Amsterdam (see also Costa and De Valk 2018). Hedin (2012) describes a growing concentration of the poor and the rich in Stockholm, Malmö, and Gothenburg from the mid-1980s to 2001. ...
... Nevertheless, other scholars found evidence that intermarried immigrants' higher socioeconomic resources are the result of selection into intermarriage (Kantarevic 2004;Dribe and Nystedt 2015;Furtado and Song 2015). Having a higher socioeconomic status provides more opportunities for immigrants to meet natives (Costa and de Valk 2018). Thus, marital integration may be the consequence of incorporation into the majority society, not the cause (Rodríguez-García et al. 2015). ...
What role do intermarriages (i.e., interethnic marriages) play in immigrants’ life satisfaction? Only a few studies have addressed this question. While intermarriages are associated with upward mobility for immigrants, they are more likely to get divorced than intramarriages (i.e., marriages among co-ethnics), which suggests either a positive or negative association between intermarriage and immigrants’ life satisfaction. Drawing on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (1984–2018), we estimate three-level hybrid models to investigate immigrants’ life satisfaction in inter- compared to intramarriages across the family life course. After controlling for socioeconomic characteristics, we find that intermarried immigrants had lower life satisfaction, especially after the birth of their first child. This result suggests that the socialization of children might be a more contentious issue in intermarriages. Overall, these findings illustrate that marriage types and the life course should be considered in future studies on immigrants’ life satisfaction and integration.
An open-access version is available for download here: https://www.econstor.eu/handle/10419/267783
