Paradoxes of Segregation?
Yet, this is not the case in many parts of the world, in particular in Southern Europe, the focus of this book. At least since the 1990s, cities such as Milan, Rome, Madrid and Lisbon have presented an apparently paradoxical phenomenon that challenges these assumptions: while urban inequalities and residential marginalisation are traditionally high, spatial segregation among both native and foreign groups has been low and moderate. And this has declined even further during the 2000s. This phenomenon has intrigued me since my migratory journey across this region started in the early 1990s. Ethnic concentration patterns and urban processes seemed very different from those depicted in North American and Northern European cities; are these patterns an exception, or a transitory phenomenon about to change with increasing migration? Are processes of ethnic and classâbased segregation distinct across places? If so, what drives these? After a century of research in segregation, dominant theories could not fully explain this phenomenon, and this part of the continent was overlooked in the European debates on segregation bourgeoning in that period. Indeed, it was surprising to realise how little was known about Southern European multiâethnic cities.
Similar paradoxical phenomena have been happening in other parts around the world, but have only recently drawn considerable attention. Despite the worsening of social inequality, several cities are not becoming more spatially segregated. Even with the surge of new mass migrations or the escalation of the housing affordability crisis, the forecast process of âghettoisationâ has not materialised in a systematic way across cities. In several places residential segregation has even decreased among immigrants and native groups across the city and its metropolitan area, and some neighbourhoods are becoming more ethnically diverse and socially mixed.
This is particularly striking in the United States, where the latest census revealed an unparalleled decline in spatial division between White and Black in 53 metropolitan areas, especially âin cities long divided by race, including Detroit and Chicagoâ, with San Francisco becoming one of the least racially segregated cities in the United States (Lee 2015, p. 1). Is this mainly because of changing demographics, due to the unprecedented variety of immigrant inflows and ethnoâracial mobility associated with globalisation? The dispersal of households from Hispanic origin, in particular, is claimed to be reducing segregation in US cities (Frey 2014), driving the âglobal neighborhoodsâ phenomenon, âwhere Hispanics and Asians are the pioneer integrators of previously allâWhite zones, later followed by Blacksâ (Logan and Zhang 2010, p. 1069). Importantly, some scholars may see this decline in segregation as a sign of assimilation into US society (Pais, South and Crowder 2012), even though poverty and divisions are escalating, and racial unrests returning. For many, it is just a temporary phenomenon because neighbourhoods are expected to resegregate âorganicallyâ, mirroring individuals' racial preferences (Clark 2009); only a few consider that this phenomenon contradicts established North American segregation theories (see discussion in LumleyâSapanski and Fowler 2017).
On the other side of the Pacific, the role played by local and national institutions seems to matter more in studies of spatial segregation. Yip (2012, p. 89) stresses that local housing policies and the planning system in Hong Kong have been indispensable to ensure social mixing in such a divided city. For Fujita and Hill (2012, p. 37) the Japanese national political economy and its legacy is crucial to understand why residential income inequality âdoes not translate into classâbased segregation in Tokyoâ.
Is this phenomenon the byâproduct of distinctive historic conditions? This seems to be the case in most postâSocialist Eastern European cities that saw the upsurge of class inequalities after the late 1970s combined with a decrease in spatial segregation (which then stabilised throughout the 1990s). This has been unsurprisingly termed the âparadox of postâSocialist transitionâ (SĂ˝kora 2009) or âpostâSocialist segregationâ (MarciĹczak, Gentile and StÄpniak 2013). A key argument, as suggested for Tallinn, is that it was state Socialism that engineered cities around low levels of socioâspatial differentiation; and this remained so thereafter because of the residential immobility of the lower classes combined with the slow mobility of the upper classes (Ruoppila and Kährik 2003). Yet moderate segregation levels should not be âascribed solely to the period of postâSocialist developmentâ but to ongoing gentrification and middleâclass suburbanisation, as claimed for Prague (OuĹednĂÄek et al. 2016, p. 26).
Also here the paradox is considered by some as a transitory phase. Residential segregation is âinevitablyâ expected to rise when the neoliberal âreformâ of the labour and housing markets is completed: central areas will then be colonised by wealthier groups, suburbs by the middle classes, and the rest squeezed in between (see discussion in SĂ˝kora and Bouzarovski 2012). Conversely, others predict increasingly finer patterns of segregation due to a âvariety of processes, sometimes apparently contradictory, at workâ (Haase et al. 2011, p. xvi), unclear regulation on tenure rights and property restitution, and a âcomplex intermix of investmentâdisinvestmentâ (KovĂĄcs and SzabĂł 2016, p. 256; see also Lowe and Tsenkova 2003).
The simultaneous escalation in class inequalities and fall in segregation indices seems, instead, a recent occurrence in various Northern and Central European cities. The explanation regarding changing demographics posited in the United States reverberates in the United Kingdom with Catney (2015, 2016) suggesting that the growing âsuperâdiversityâ of the population, in particular due to the complex composition of recent waves of migration (Vertovec 2007), is driving the (ethnic) desegregation of London and other British cities. In Vienna, Hatz, Kohlbacher and Reeger (2016) associate these processes with the desegregation of the wealthiest groups, while in Dutch cities these are linked to neoliberal housing policies and tenureâmixing regeneration programmes (Bolt, ĂzĂźekren and Phillips 2010). Critically, none of these explanations consider low segregation levels or desegregation processes as unequivocal indicators of social upward mobility and improved life chances.
Equally intriguing is the âreverse of the paradoxâ encountered in Scandinavian cities. Copenhagen, Stockholm, Oslo and Helsinki are among the least socially unequal cities of the world (Barr 2017), but their levels of spatial segregation are considerable; part of the reason seems to lie beyond the city boundaries, within the action of Scandinavian welfare states (Arbaci 2007; Andersson et al. 2010; Andersen et al. 2016).
This mosaic of cases does not necessarily portray a trend or a universal phenomenon (oscillations and rises in segregation indices can be simultaneously traced in many multiâethnic cities; Tammaru et al. 2016). But it suggests that correlations between the spatial and social dimensions of inequality are not as straightforward as often implied by mainstream metaphors of segregation. Simply put, these patterns do not reveal a paradox, but rather indicate that the relationship between segregation and inequality is far from linear. How can we make sense of these patterns? How can we unpack this complex relationship to better understand (and address) the possible social problems or issues sometimes associated with segregation? Perhaps the concept of segregation should be abandoned altogether since, as van Kempen (2002) mentioned, it cannot be explained by one single theory.
Certainly, the variety of explanations put forward, while limited, expose radically different approaches to segregation (a discussion furthered in Chapter 2). They differ greatly in how segregation is perceived: is it an organic and inevitable outcome resulting from individual preferences and/or global forces or, conversely, is it a structural, systemic process? Should it be seen as an issue attributed to individuals, the neighbourhood, the city or society as a whole? Ultimately, is it a problem and for whom, and what are the solutions? At the heart of this contested debate is the way segregation is conceptualised (theory formation) and addressed (policy formulation).
This book embraces this debate through an international investigation of patterns of ethnic residential segregation across eight Southern European cities â Lisbon (Portugal), Madrid, Barcelona (Spain), Rome, Milan, Turin, Genoa (Italy) and Athens (Greece) â from the early 1990s to the global financial crisis of the late 2000s. The study is embedded within broader debates and analyses on segregation patterns in Western European4 societies. It is the outcome of two decades of comparative research exploring a region that offers a rich ground for advancing our understanding of segregation processes (Arbaci 2002, 2007, 2008; Arbaci and Malheiros 2010; Arbaci and TapadaâBerteli 2012).
