The spatial scale of white avoidance: Processes reconstituting ethnic segregation in Sweden

Gijs Westra , Bielefeld Unversity

Since the migration crisis, worries of migrant integration have taken a dominant role in popular discourse. Ethnic segregation is often framed as a failure of migrant integration. However, Swedish ethnic segregation is (re)produced through white avoidance: the ethnic majority avoiding moving to areas with high concentrations of ethnic minorities. Current explanations for these patterns are either ethnic prejudice or homophily, or the quality-of-life-based racial proxy hypothesis. This study explores the strength of both explanatory mechanisms by predicting the ethnicity of an adult moving into a neighbourhood based on the sociodemographic characteristics of their new neighbours. Moreover, this study explores the effect of scale using a bespoke knn approach, estimating white avoidance at eight scales. I find that the ethnic concentrations are the strongest predictor of the decreasing odds of a mover being a visible majority. Other sociodemographic concentrations, unemployment and, to a lesser extent, homeownership matter more on less-detailed scales (1,600 nearest neighbours), thus suggesting that different sociodemographic concentrations matter to the individual at different scales: for ethnicity at the highest resolution (100 nearest neighbours), for unemployment and the lowest (6,400 nearest neighbours). Employing an ensemble model improves fit, indicating that areas of high ethnic and unemployed concentrations are less moved into by visible majorities. The findings stress that while socioeconomic conditions matter, ethnic concentration is the leading factor in determining ethnic mobility flows. Moreover, the findings underline that in the spatial segmentation of ethnic minorities, the behaviours, beliefs, and attitudes of the ethnic majority are of crucial importance.

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 Presented in Session 64. Flash Session Residential Context and Spatial Segregation in Migrant Populations