Dynamics of Segregation: Linking Lives and Life Courses across Changing Neighbourhoods

Shabnam Khezri , Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Lena Imeraj, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Feriha Nazda Güngördü-Saygi, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Tuba Bircan, Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Segregation research has long treated ethnic spatial patterns as static outcomes of socioeconomic inequality, offering limited insight into how people and places evolve together. This study adopts a life course perspective to explore how social stratification and intergenerational resources shape ethnic residential segregation as a dynamic and relational process. Focusing on descendants of Turkish immigrants in Brussels, Ghent, and Antwerp, it investigates how exposure to ethnically differentiated neighbourhoods during adolescence influences residential trajectories in adulthood, accounting for both individual attainments and parental characteristics. Using longitudinally linked Belgian census and population register data, the study follows individuals born between 1984 and 1986 from their adolescence in 2001 to adulthood in 2024. Neighbourhoods are classified through a dynamic typology based on co-varying changes in ethnic diversity and segregation, measured by the Location Quotient, Fractionalization Index, and a normalized LQ-based segregation indicator. Residential trajectories are modelled using sequence analysis, where each annual neighbourhood type represents a state in the sequence. Pairwise sequence dissimilarities are computed through optimal matching, and clusters of trajectories are derived through hierarchical and medoid-based clustering methods. A multinomial logistic regression then estimates how gender, educational attainment, migration generation, and parental socioeconomic background shape the likelihood of following distinct residential trajectories. By tracing long-term residential trajectories across changing neighbourhood contexts, this study moves beyond cross-sectional accounts of segregation to capture in-situ neighbourhood change and cumulative exposure over time, thereby rethinking ethnic residential segregation as a non-linear, path-dependent process shaped by linked lives, cumulative inequality, and evolving urban contexts.

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 Presented in Session P2. Families, Fertility, and the Life Course 2