Urban social mechanisms at work: commentary on “Stockholm: social mechanisms of migrants’ emplacement in a segregated global city” by Johan Sandberg

Abstract

ABSTRACT Johan Sandberg’s article offers a tale of socio-economic polarization in the processes of immigration, as found in the mutual conditioning of residential segregation and segmented labour markets. The analysis offers a way to link specific to more general mechanisms generating social inequalities; for example, the specific mechanisms of filtering, gentrification, and (informal) social network ties produce a hard-to-reverse ratchet effect. Future analysis could gain from looking at potential counter-tendencies in housing areas not yet considered. Johan Sandberg’s article raises fascinating questions in a comparative European perspective, in particular with respect to uneven neoliberalization in a social democratic welfare state and its effects on segregation.