The housing experiences of immigrants in a 'new immigrant gateway': an exploration of process in an era of ‘super-diversity’

Abstract

Driven by restructuring economies, decentralising cities and the growth of suburbs and rural regions as employment centres, as well as State policies dispersing immigrants seeking asylum to rural regions, ‘new immigrant gateways’ now conceptualise the new population centres and rural areas to which immigrants are migrating. Gateways differ from earlier sites because they are ethnically and socio-economically diverse, with no one group dominating, and because immigrants move directly to rural areas rather than ‘spring-boarding’ from urban centres. This paper examines the housing pathways of immigrants based on data collected through the conduct of in-depth qualitative interviews with a diverse sample of immigrants who migrated to a rural town on the Western periphery of Europe. Situated in one such ‘gateway’ in Ireland, this quasi-ethnographic study mobilises the metaphor of the housing pathway. The findings demonstrate the interplay of employment status, gender and ethnicity as participants moved through housing, and as relationships and family life were subject to change. Employment brought options and fluidity, unemployment created barriers and constraints, and relationship breakdown negatively affected housing stability. Thus, while immigration status influenced their housing options, it was one factor among a number of others that shaped their housing pathways.