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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
Segregation is one of the starkest social realities of contemporary societies. Though often associated with explicitly racist laws of the past, it is a phenomenon that persists to this day and is a crucial element for understanding group relations and the wellbeing of different populations in society.
In this book, Eric Fong, Kumiko Shibuya, and Brent Berry provide a thorough discussion of the evolving complexity of segregation in its variety and variations. The authors focus not only on past trends and the development of segregation measures, but also the current state of affairs, and demonstrate the connections between the segregation of racial/ethnic groups and immigrant communities, along with poverty concentration. By taking a wide, cross-cutting view, the authors identify commonalities and differences in the causes, mechanisms, and consequences of segregation. Spatial and social segregation together perpetuate and reinforce the unequal distribution of resources among racial and ethnic groups, which in turn can have positive and negative consequences for individuals and groups.
This critical overview of segregation will be a valuable and insightful resource for students of sociology, geography, and ethnic studies, as well as those keen to get a handle on this persistent challenge to equal and inclusive societies.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Tables and Figures
Tables
Figures
1 Introduction
Residential Segregation: Bird’s-Eye, Drive-By, and On-Foot Views
The Measurement and Explanation of Residential Segregation
Segregation in History
Chapter-by-Chapter Outline of the Book
Notes
2 What Is Segregation?
Causes of Segregation
Segregation and Boundaries
Consequences of Segregation
A Society without Segregation
Conclusion
3 The Measurement of Segregation
Segregation Indices
Index of Dissimilarity
Efforts to Clarify the Concept of Segregation
Dimensions of Segregation
First Direction: from Aspatial to Spatial Measures
The Checkerboard Problem
Individual Measures of Segregation
Second Direction: From Two-Group to Multi-Group Measures
Approaches for Developing Multi-Group Segregation Measures
The Spatial Version of the Multi-Group Segregation Measure
Third Direction: Scales of Segregation
Global and Local Measures of Segregation
Segregation and Geographic Scale
Conclusion
Notes
4 Racial and Ethnic Residential Patterns
Trends and Patterns: Segregation in the United States
Trends and Patterns: Racial and Ethnic Residential Segregation in Other Parts of the World
Explanations for Racial and Ethnic Residential Segregation
Spatial Assimilation
The Place Stratification Model
The Group Preference Model
The Social Structural Sorting Perspective
Evaluation of the Different Perspectives
Consequences of Racial and Ethnic Residential Segregation
Temporal, Spatial, and Structural Mechanisms of Residential Segregation
Conclusion
5 Income Segregation
Segregation by Income Level: Global Perspective
Racial/Ethnic Concentration of Poverty
Explanations for Income Residential Segregation
Income Inequality and Housing Supply
Neo-Liberalism and Income Residential Segregation
Economic Reform in China
Explanation for Racial/Ethnic Poverty of Concentration
The Flight of the Black Middle Class
The Role of Racial Segregation in the Concentration of Black Poverty
Explanations for the Decline of Racial/Ethnic Poverty Concentration in the 1990s and Its Rise in the 2000s
Consequences of Income Residential Segregation
Mechanisms of Poverty Concentration
Social Disorganization
Collective Efficacy
Interaction of Poverty Concentration and Residential Segregation
Conclusion
6 Ethnic Communities
Location of Ethnic Communities
Why and How Ethnic Groups Concentrate and Form Ethnic Communities
Social Explanation
Economic Explanation
Cultural Explanation
Consequences of Ethnic Community Concentration
Social Support
Ethnic Identity
Ethnic Mobilization
Economic Outcomes
Conclusion
7 Residential and Social Segregation of Immigrants
Three Major Theories of Integration
Classical Assimilation Perspective
Selective Assimilation Perspective
Segmented Assimilation Perspective
Residential Segregation of Immigrants
Neighborhood Qualities and Residential Segregation
Anomalies in Immigrant Residential Segregation
Possible Reasons for Anomalies
Preferences
Discrimination
Social Segregation of Immigrants
Inter-Group Contact
Occupational Segregation
Conclusion
8 Conclusion
References
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Tables
Chapter 1
Table 1.1
How residential segregation relates to physical and social distance
Chapter 2
Table 2.1
Segregation and boundaries
Chapter 3
Table 3.1
An illustration of the composition invariance principle
Table 3.2
Segregation in the 10 largest metropolitan areas in the United States, 2000...
Table 3.3
Dissimilarity index of the 10 largest census metropolitan areas of indigenous po...
Chapter 7
Table 7.1
Theories of integration and expected residential outcomes for immigrants
List of Illustrations
Chapter 3
Figure 3.1
An illustration of the checkerboard problem
Figure 3.2
Dimensions of spatial segregation
Chapter 6
Figure 6.1
Chinatown in Toronto
Figure 6.2
Chinese suburban concentrated area in Greater Toronto
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
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Segregation
Eric Fong, Kumiko Shibuya, and Brent Berry
polity
Copyright Page
Copyright © Eric Fong, Kumiko Shibuya, and Brent Berry 2022
The right of Eric Fong, Kumiko Shibuya, and Brent Berry to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2022 by Polity Press
Polity Press
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Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK
Polity Press
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All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-3474-6
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-3475-3(pb)
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2021939026
by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NL
The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.
Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.
For further information on Polity, visit our website: politybooks.com
Tables and Figures
Tables
1.1 How residential segregation relates to physical and social distance
2.1 Segregation and boundaries
3.1 An illustration of the composition invariance principle
3.2 Segregation in the 10 largest metropolitan areas in the United States, 2000–10
3.3 Dissimilarity index of the 10 largest census metropolitan areas of indigenous population in Canada, 2016
7.1 Theories of integration and expected residential outcomes for immigrants
Figures
3.1 An illustration of the checkerboard problem
3.2 Dimensions of spatial segregation
6.1 Chinatown in Toronto
6.2 Chinese suburban concentrated area in Greater Toronto
1 Introduction
When you walk the streets of major cities of the world, such as Cairo, London, Mexico City, New York, São Paulo, Sydney, Tokyo, and Toronto, you will quickly notice different groups of people living in different parts of the city. In some neighborhoods, most residents are of the same racial or ethnic group. They tend to know each other well as many of them have grown up in the same neighborhood. In middle-class neighborhoods, you may see rows of well-maintained houses with manicured lawns. In other parts of the city, you may also see areas with high concentration of poor families, dotted with dilapidated houses, unkempt yards, and graffiti on walls. Some other neighborhoods are home to clusters of immigrants where you may see shops and restaurants with foreign words on storefront signs. The distinctiveness and spatial arrangement of these neighborhoods contribute to the pattern of residential segregation in a city, which is the subject this book will explore.
Residential segregation creates and maintains the separation of population groups into distinct neighborhoods and shapes the living environment at the neighborhood level (Kawachi and Berkman 2003). This separation may be voluntary or involuntary. Residential segregation has most commonly been applied to the study of racial segregation, but it can be used to study the sorting of a variety of different groups into neighborhoods and other social environments (e.g. on the basis of race/ethnicity, income, age, household type, sexual orientation, religion, etc.). Most of this book will focus on residential segregation by racial/ethnic status because it has received by far the greatest amount of attention due to its role in social stratification, inequality, and conflict within society. Because racial/ethnic status is correlated with income and wealth, any investigation of segregation involves examining patterns that represent the effects of both racial/ethnic identity and economic status of people and their residential communities.
How does residential segregation relate to patterns of segregation more generally? Table 1.1 provides a simple conceptual guide that relates segregation to the social and physical distance of groups. The most common way of studying residential segregation is to examine situations where there is both physical and social distance between distinct groups. The word “residential” in residential segregation usually implies groups living in completely different neighborhoods, which are most often approximated by census tracts in empirical research. The physical distance of being in another neighborhood implies that there is also social distance, so residential segregation most commonly means both physical and social distance. In the table, we label this “complete” segregation. Research examining this kind of segregation represents the bulk of research on residential segregation and will take up most of our attention in this book. For example, in many large cities in the United States, a situation of high segregation, sometimes called “hypersegregation”1 (the concept will be elaborated in Chapter 4), persists between blacks and whites, whereby the sharing of neighborhoods and social environments is uncommon (Massey and Denton 1989).
Table 1.1How residential segregation relates to physical and social distance
Social distance
Social closeness
Physical distance
Complete segregation:Lack of social interaction and not living in the same neighborhood
Community without propinquity: Maintaining social interaction but not living in the same neighborhood (e.g. complete lockdown during pandemic, soccer fanatics, Chinese diasporas, online gaming groups, antifa)
Physical closeness
Partial segregation:Lack of social interaction despite living in the same neighborhood
Complete integration:Maintaining social interaction and living in the same neighborhood
Increasingly, in contemporary multicultural cities, we see a more nuanced form of segregation, whereby different groups share spatial territory (physical closeness) but have substantial social distance from one another. We term these situations “partial” segregation. Studying this kind of segregation presents both conceptual and methodological challenges for researchers. This is because despite sharing a neighborhood, a variety of physical, social, and symbolic boundaries may stifle meaningful social closeness between groups. These within-neighborhood boundaries may include the built environment (e.g. high-rise vs. low-rise residence), language, interests, affiliation, consumption practices, patterns of use, and many others. For example, in Toronto, despite sharing the same neighborhood as measured in conventional analyses, new immigrant families living in low-rent apartment buildings along major avenues are often socially distant from the long-standing residents who own single-family homes on quiet residential streets within the neighborhood. Another example is the case of social connections during a pandemic when we practice “social distancing” by keeping some degree of physical distance from our neighbors. One of the challenges in the study of segregation is to understand how and why some groups remain segregated once there is physical closeness, even after a long time. We will spend some time discussing this more complex form of residential segregation and describe how new measures and methods are needed for understanding it.
The existence of both physical and social closeness between groups, which we label “complete” integration, is an uncommon and idealized situation that is useful as a reference point. Social theorists for generations have sought to define social integration, which usually entails normative, functional, and communicative integration between group members (Durkheim 2002 [1897]; Habermas 1984; Parsons 1951). There are debates about whether such integration can be achieved in multicultural societies in a way that meaningfully and fairly incorporates diverse ethnic identities, people, and backgrounds. In Chapter 2 and beyond, we will expand upon these ideas as they relate to residential segregation.
Finally, it is worthwhile to note that in our ever-connected globalized world, it is possible to achieve social closeness with others despite physical distance. We term this combination “community without propinquity” in the table, in homage to Webber’s (1970) description that the basis for social closeness between some in urbanized societies is not proximity of a local neighborhood, but common interests, be they political, religious, or leisure. This perspective is also in line with a social network view of community, in particular a community-liberated perspective, which stresses that contemporary communities are based on social networks of a diverse range of people in a diverse range of locations and are liberated from spatial arrangements (Wellman 1979). Members of these groups sometimes come together episodically for meetups, but most group communication is online. As the online world allows for more connections and richer forms of communication, people are increasingly creating and maintaining social closeness forged by common identities, interests, and associations. The glue that binds these individuals can be a variety of things, including shared affinity for particular interests in mass culture, a particular subculture, ethno-religious identity, and cultural connections of diasporas. Resonating with Claude Fischer’s subcultural theory (1975), online communication technology today is a tool that gives individuals increasingly rich access to all the heterogeneous identity groups of contemporary society. What does segregation based on physical distance mean in a world of ever-richer forms of online connection possibilities? We will revisit situations of “community without propinquity” later in the book.
Residential Segregation: Bird’s-Eye, Drive-By, and On-Foot Views
The common prevalent and consequential forms of residential segregation are visually apparent as we move across most major cities in North America. The most encompassing view of residential segregation – the “bird’s-eye” view – sees what proportions of people belonging to different groups live in different neighborhoods across an entire city. These proportions can be color-coded onto a map of the city to reveal broad patterns, or these proportions can be summarized into an “index of dissimilarity,” an index ranging from 0 to 1, with higher values indicating higher levels of segregation, or other measures that seek to capture essential qualities of segregation in a single number. (These indices will be discussed in Chapter 3.) Despite its utility for broad observation, the bird’s-eye view misses a lot of details about segregation that may be important.
If we shift to what we observe driving a car along the roads, we see a bit more detail. For example, driving on Lakeshore Drive in Chicago from the north side to the south side of the city, you can see stark transitions in the racial and economic composition of residents and their neighborhoods. The combined effect of changes in both racial and economic composition of various urban communities can make it easier to visually identify changes during this drive. In the north, you see more middle-class neighborhoods with well-maintained houses and mostly white residents. In the south, you see more poor and working-class neighborhoods with graffiti on the walls and broken windows in some houses. If you are in Canada and visit the northwest end of Toronto, you see high proportions of black residents around the Jane and Finch neighborhood, which is characterized by high proportions of low-income families and public housing. However, despite this greater detail from this “drive-by” view, we still do not yet observe fine details that may be important to understanding residential segregation.
If you get out of your car and walk across the urban cityscape, you will observe a richer texture of differences that represent the communities that live in these neighborhoods. Engaging all your senses, you will smell different ethnic foods, enjoy distinctive types of ethnic architecture and businesses, notice different ways of dressing, hear unfamiliar music, and perhaps feel welcomed or feel like an outsider by how you are looked at or treated. At the street level, from an “on-foot” view, residential segregation and ethnic concentration is experienced socially and felt emotionally. This experiential and emotional connection gives us insight into how segregation is shaped to both social and physical distance.
The Measurement and Explanation of Residential Segregation
Residential segregation is both durable and dynamic. That is, many residential patterns are stable and have existed for decades, while others have emerged recently with immigration and intra-metropolitan migration patterns. For example, in the United States, the growing Latino immigrant population has increasingly been segregated from whites. In 2000, Latinos were found to be segregated from whites to an even higher degree in new destination locations (i.e. where Latino population was negligible in 1990) than in established gateway cities. Krysan and Crowder (2017) lamented the persistence of segregation in North American cities. However, some research suggests that segregation levels in major American cities have been declining since 1970, the largest decline occurring in Chicago. Reardon and Owens (2014) found a similar pattern of decline in residential segregation from 1980 to 2000 in small local geographic areas which contributed to the decline of within-school segregation during the same period. In other words, people from different racial groups become more likely to share neighborhoods than they were in the past, which in turn leads to a more racially diverse student body over time. Indeed, Glaeser and Vigdor (2012) claim that the end of the segregation era has finally arrived.
The study of residential segregation can be divided into work that describes and work that explains the causes of residential segregation. This book will cover both. Descriptive work uses various measures to convey the extent of segregation and describe how it is patterned in urban space. These measures may be indices of segregation that seek to take a lot of data about where groups live and summarize it into a single number. Descriptive approaches may also include visual depictions of segregation patterns using color-coded maps, a powerful tool for conveying the patterning of groups. In this book, we will review different descriptive measures of segregation. Descriptive “facts” about residential segregation are important in and of themselves for gauging potential problems of inequality and stratification. Descriptive measures are also essential for the explanation of segregation, because they provide the context through which we can generate and test hypotheses about its causes.
What factors explain observed patterns of residential segregation? Chapter 2 lays out a variety of answers to this question, providing a typology of social forces ranging from macro to micro. For now, let us limit ourselves by saying that one of simplest and most important factors is whether individuals sought to be segregated or not. Distinguishing whether residential segregation is voluntary or involuntary is one of the simplest ways to explain it (but difficult to measure). Some groups, new immigrants in particular, cluster in specific areas by choice. They maintain relationships and social interactions largely within their own groups. In other words, they are socially segregated. In Canada, Richmond in the Greater Vancouver Area and Richmond Hill in the Greater Toronto Area have high concentrations of Chinese. There you will see neon signs in Chinese characters displayed on storefronts for many blocks. Community malls with shops and restaurants are full of Chinese consumers enjoying social gatherings and cultural activities. In central Los Angeles, Korean immigrants concentrate in Koreatown. These communities have many ethnic churches. Residents of these communities are largely immigrants, who stay together for social support and maintain strong social boundaries between themselves and others.
Although these groups can choose to maintain a high level of interaction within their boundaries, they are sometimes socially segregated from other groups involuntarily. For example, it has been documented that there is a high level of occupational segregation in employment opportunities and exclusion from better jobs for Hispanic and Asian men. Some groups have almost no representation in senior management or supervisory positions. These patterns of involuntary segregation have been found in a variety of places, ranging from Canada to Spain to Hong Kong. Friendships in neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces tend to develop along racial or class lines.
These observations lead us to ask a series of questions: What are the current patterns of residential and social segregation in the United States and other countries? Have the levels of residential and social segregation increased, decreased, or remained the same over the last few decades? What is the relationship between residential segregation and social segregation? Why do we find residential and social segregation among different social groups in almost every city? These questions are not simply asking, “Is there segregation?” but, “How much segregation is there in the city, and why?” More importantly, “Why do we need to be concerned about segregation?” To answer these and other questions, we first need to investigate some fundamental issues: What is segregation? Why are people segregated? What are the consequences of segregation? These are the key questions that will be addressed in this book.
Segregation in History
Residential segregation is not a unique phenomenon in contemporary society. It has a very long history in human civilization, likely pre-dating the written record. Van der Spek (2009) indicated that ethnic segregation can be dated back to Hellenistic Babylon, while Cowgill (1997) even documented residential segregation in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, circa 100 BC. Jewish quarters emerged in many European cities centuries ago, such as the Venetian Ghetto in Venice, Italy, in the early 1500s. The Jewish quarter in Córdoba, Spain, which is visited by many tourists today, dates back even further, to the Middle Ages.
In Asia, as described by Elliott (2001), the Manchurians lived in residential self-segregation after they conquered the Ming Dynasty and ruled China from 1600 to the early 1900s. Their segregation became less strictly enforced as the ruling authority of the Qing Dynasty gradually weakened. Christopher (1992) used census data to document that, in the colonies of the British Empire in the last century and before, there was strict segregation of British residents from others, maintained through both formal and informal social control. This segregation was not only by race and economic status, but also by religious affiliation and ethnicity (e.g. Protestant English vs. Catholic Irish vs. Catholic Italian). As early as 1901, the level of racial residential segregation in most of the major cities in the British Empire was over 60 out of 100, as measured by the dissimilarity index of residential segregation. This level is considered very high by contemporary standards. In some colonies, such as Hong Kong, local residents were banned from residing in certain areas in the beginning of the last century. For example, the Peak in Hong Kong island was reserved for Europeans, despite their small number in the early 1900s (Christopher 1992). Similarly, racial residential segregation was legalized in towns of British Africa. Christopher suggested that a high level of racial residential segregation reflects the small size of the colonizer group and their cultural preference. Lewis and Harris (2013) researched the history of segregation in Bombay and found a high level of residential segregation between European and local residents in the colonial period before the 1950s. During the Japanese colonial rule of Taiwan, the area of Seimon-cho (modern name Ximending) was developed for new Japanese immigrants. This extensive body of scholarship makes it clear that residential segregation has persisted for centuries, mainly because colonizers prefer staying among themselves for reasons of safety and cultural identity. Residential segregation also reflects own-group preference, prejudice against other groups, and affinity for familiar culture and social practices.
In North America, a plethora of studies have documented residential segregation of blacks. In the United States, the Great Migration of African Americans from the South to the North has transformed racial residential patterns in major cities. Segregation drastically increased from the 1950s to the 1970s. Some suggested that the increase largely reflected the increase in population of African Americans (Lieberson 1981). Some also argued the increase was a result of government policies, such as a policy known as “redlining” (i.e. the government graded neighborhoods into four categories: neighborhoods in which a majority of their residents were racial minorities were marked in red, implying that people living there were high-risk mortgage lenders) (Rothstein 2017), and practices of real estate intuitions, such as “blockbusting” or steering potential buyers (Massey and Denton 1993). In Canada, the black population increased during the American Revolution as the British promised freedom and settlement for “slaves” who fought on the British side. However, after arriving in Canada, most blacks were granted parcels of land located in remote rural areas, especially Nova Scotia. Thus, black segregation has been documented there since the eighteenth century (Fong 1996).
Just as residential segregation has accompanied the development of cities since their birth, social segregation among groups has also been common in human history. As civilizations became more complex due to greater surplus being generated from control over the environment, status hierarchies expanded, and formal and informal forms of segregation became common. For example, during the Middle Ages, there was limited daily interaction among members of the royal and noble classes and the peasant class, let alone social mobility across these classes. For centuries, the caste system in India allowed only endogamy, which is the custom of marrying only within the limits of a local community, clan, or tribe (Olcott 1944). In China, the aristocratic class in most dynasties maintained a clear group boundary. In Japan, the burakumin, an “untouchable” class at the bottom of the social hierarchy, have experienced social isolation for generations. Religious groups sometimes retain their own identity and practices by means of voluntary social segregation. Since medieval times, monks and nuns have stayed in monasteries and convents to maintain social separation from others and aid religious devotion. Mennonites and Amish communities retain their social segregation from other groups for years. Minority and immigrant groups have experienced social segregation voluntarily or involuntarily in schools and workplaces throughout centuries.
In the past century, the study of racial and ethnic segregation became more important than ever as many countries (e.g. Australia, Canada, the United States) became more racially and ethnically diverse due to the arrival of immigrants from all over the world. As the level of racial and ethnic diversity increases, the level of residential segregation for some groups has remained steady or even increased. Given the broad and negative impact of segregation on the social and economic outcomes of segregated groups, it is important to have a better understanding of the reasons for its emergence in a multi-ethnic context, the mechanisms for maintaining it, and its wide-ranging consequences.
Chapter-by-Chapter Outline of the Book
This book is an in-depth examination of segregation, with topics ranging from its societal importance, theoretical foundations, conceptual framing, methodological approaches, consequences, and potential remedies at both the community and macro level.
Chapter 2 outlines the significance of segregation as a social problem and reviews the major theories and concepts scholars use to study it. We begin by defining segregation and illustrating its relevance to social stratification and group well-being. Segregation has significant economic, psychological, and social implications for individuals, groups, and their societies. To gain conceptual clarity, we expand on our typology of segregation to distinguish it by type (physical, social, or a combination), nature (voluntary and involuntary), and consequences (economic, psychological, and social). This expanded typology touches on the definition, causes, and consequences of segregation. For example, as noted above, one helpful way to distinguish segregation is whether it is voluntary or involuntary. While voluntary segregation is often a group strategy for adaptation or a reflection of preference, involuntary segregation is often a result of constrained choice due to discrimination, prejudice, or other variables that limit access, such as income.
Chapter 3 turns to how social scientists measure segregation. Identifying patterns allows us to describe what segregation looks like in different places, and helps us to quantify the extent of segregation using indices and other summary measures. Quantitative measures of segregation show that it is common, with almost everyone experiencing some form of it in their lifetime. Representing the “bird’s-eye” view, we first discuss segregation indices that seek to summarize important features of city-wide segregation patterns. Quantitative indices developed by sociologists and geographers can describe the evenness, exposure, concentration, centralization, and clustering of different groups within the city (Massey and Denton 1988). We will review methodological innovations seeking to improve the accuracy of these measures, as well as new measures that better incorporate spatial relations between groups, account for segregation in multigroup settings, and allow for comparison of different countries and urban scale. The ubiquitous nature of segregation suggests that it is a good entry point to understand group dynamics and individual behaviors. However, studying these important processes requires zooming in from the bird’s-eye perspective toward the ground level. Representing a “on-foot” or “street-level” view, we will discuss how segregation can be created and maintained through a broader range of physical, social, and symbolic boundaries that often create social distance even when groups are physically proximate. Together, both bird’s-eye and ground-level assessments of segregation are important for explaining the social, economic, and cultural factors that create and maintain that segregation over time.
Chapter 4 describes patterns of racial and ethnic residential segregation in different countries, but with particular focus on the United States. We then discuss theoretical perspectives from social science that seek to explain residential segregation: spatial assimilation, place stratification, group preference, and social structural sorting. The spatial assimilation perspective emphasizes the importance of socioeconomic differences between groups to explain the segregation of different groups. The place stratification perspective highlights the process through which the dominant group maintain spatial separation from other groups. The group preference perspective suggests that segregation reflects group relations. The discussion highlights the debate over voluntary versus involuntary segregation with respect to residential segregation. The social structural sorting perspective points out that we are familiar with only a limited number of neighborhoods. Such knowledge is shaped by the social structure of the society in which we grew up. Our choice of residence is thus based on this small number of familiar neighborhoods, which in turn perpetuates residential segregation. Finally, we highlight how residential segregation can have drastic consequences for the life chances of individuals. The discussion demonstrates that racial and ethnic residential segregation is the spatial foundation of inequality and almost every individual experiences it in some form.
Chapter 5 focuses on residential segregation that is patterned by both economic and racial/ethnic status, namely when there is income segregation and poverty concentration of racial and ethnic groups. The discussion addresses residential segregation by income level in various cities in the world. Different explanations are suggested to account for income residential segregation in different cities with diverse political structures. Beginning in the 1980s, a growing set of literature started exploring the spatial concentration of poverty in the United States, especially among racial minorities. Most scholars agreed that the cause of poverty concentration was involuntary, and two possible reasons emerged to explain the poverty concentration of African Americans. Wilson (1987) argued that the selective departure of middle-class African Americans from poor black neighborhoods had contributed to the geographic concentration of poverty among African Americans. Massey and his colleagues (Massey and Denton 1993; Massey, Gross, and Shibuya 1994) argued that the concentration was simply a result of an increasing number of poor people living in certain areas due to the residential segregation of African Americans in racially segmented housing markets. An extensive body of research suggests that racial/ethnic residential segregation creates adversity for individuals growing up and living in disadvantaged neighborhoods. The negative effects on the well-being of these residents, and reverberating effects on the entire city, are substantial.
While continuing along the topic of physical segregation, Chapter 6 shifts the focus to the dynamics of the geographic concentration of ethnic groups. We discuss why and how ethnic groups are concentrated in certain locations and form ethnic communities. We focus on social, economic, and cultural explanations, and review research findings on ethnic communities in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and European countries. Groups cluster for both voluntary and involuntary reasons. We outline the consequences of participating in ethnic community, including gaining social support, improving self-esteem, and assisting economic achievement. However, we also show how participating in ethnic community can sometimes lead to negative consequences.
Chapter 7 turns to focus on the segregation of immigrants. Three theories help to explain the barriers and pathways to integration of immigrants into a new society: the classical assimilation perspective, the selective immigration perspective, and the segmented assimilation perspective. Based mainly on research from major cities in Canada, Europe, and the United States, we see that immigrant groups vary in whether and how they integrate into mainstream society. Two of the main impediments to greater social integration of immigrants are a lack of inter-group contact and occupational segregation, both of which are exacerbated by blocked career pathways, linguistic barriers, the ethnic economy, and residential segregation. The social exclusion and inequality due to segregation have detrimental effects on the integration of immigrants.
