Abstract
Selective intraurban migration of ethnic groups is often assumed to be the main microlevel mechanism reproducing ethnic residential segregation. However, other demographic processes, such as natural change and international migration, also matter. This paper contributes to the literature by unravelling the impacts of different demographic processes to changes in ethnic segregation. It uses longitudinal individual‐level register data on the complete population of the Helsinki region in Finland. We calculate observed changes in exposure indices, segregation indices in counterfactual scenarios, and decompositions of population changes. Results indicate that intraregional migration is the main process affecting segregation between Finnish‐origin and non‐Western‐origin populations, but whereas migration of the former increases segregation, migration of the latter decreases it. International migration and natural change among the non‐Western‐origin population are the main processes increasing exposure of the non‐Western‐origin population to other members of the group. No indication is found of a general tendency to “self‐segregate.”
Highlights
Ethnic residential segregation is often seen as problematic because it is thought to hinder integration, if segregation is a consequence of the self‐segregation of immigrants
The average proportion of the population with a non‐Western immigrant background in the zip‐ code areas in the Helsinki region increased from 3.1% to 5.9%, whereas the range changed from 0–10% to 0–18% and the SD from 2.4% to 4.3%
This paper investigated how different demographic processes of population change contribute to the development of ethnic segregation in the Helsinki region in Finland
Summary
Ethnic residential segregation is often seen as problematic because it is thought to hinder integration, if segregation is a consequence of the self‐segregation of immigrants. In the case of ethnic segregation, selective intraurban migration of different ethnic groups between neighbourhoods is often assumed to be the main mechanism. This is the most salient mechanism, as it may indicate preferences for coethnic neighbours or constraints regarding spatial integration (e.g., Boschman & van Ham, 2015). If intraurban migration of an ethnic group does not contribute to increasing segregation, there are less grounds to assume that a tendency for self‐segregation exists
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