Skip to content!

April 6, 2016

Cluster-Seminar Public Finances and Living Conditions

What drives ethnic de-segregation: selective mobility of immigrants out of co-ethnic neighbourhoods

Date

April 6, 2016
12:30 - 13:30

Location

Eleanor-Dulles-Raum
DIW Berlin im Quartier 110
Room 5.2.010
Mohrenstraße 58
10117 Berlin

Speakers

Tim Winke

The value of segregated neighbourhoods in the process of integration is highly debated with often ideologically charged arguments. This study investigates the effect of socio-economic and cultural assimilation on selective mobility of immigrants. For that, detailed neighbourhood and housing market information are linked to representative household panel data for Germany. The data allows distinguishing the ethnic composition of households and their neighbours. This enables a fine-grained assessment on the relation between co-ethnicity and mobility while controlling for regional supply and demand of housing. As a result, higher income and being a second-generation immigrant are associated with moving out (vs. moving among) co-ethnic neighbourhoods. Other indicators of cultural assimilation such as German language proficiency, holding a German passport and affiliation to one’s home country show no significant effect. Feeling generally disadvantaged due to origin has also little explanatory power for the residential behaviour of immigrants. However, experienced discrimination in the housing is particularly apparent among out movers. The results are in line with the spatial assimilation model but emphasize structural and not cultural terms that drive moving out of co-ethnic neighbourhoods. The popular accusation of ethnic self-segregation should therefore be revisited and contrasted with barriers for residential and social mobility among immigrants.

Contact

keyboard_arrow_up