ethnic and racial segregation: a critical perspective

© 2007 The AuthorJournal Compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Geography Compass 1/5 (2007): 1138–1159, 10.1111/j.1749-8198.2007.00051.x

Blackwell Publishing LtdOxford, UKGECOGeography Compass1749-8198© Blackwell Publishing 200705110.1111/j.1749-8198.2007.00051.xJune 2007001138???1159???Original ArticlesEthnic and racial segregation: a critical perspectiveEthnic and racial segregation: a critical perspective

Ethnic and Racial Segregation: A Critical Perspective

Deborah Phillips* Geography Department, University of Leeds

AbstractThis review adopts a critical perspective on geographical research on ethnic andracial segregation. It seeks to address four key questions. First, how can weconceptualize ethnic and racial segregation and what are the implications forgeographical research? Second, how can we best measure ethnic and racialsegregation? Questions about the politics of data collection, categorization andrepresentation are addressed. Third, what does ethnic and racial segregationmean? The article examines the different forces underlying clustering and theway in which levels of segregation have become an indicator of migrantintegration. Finally, the article reflects on how statistics and visual representationsof minority ethnic segregation might be used in the political and policy sphere.It concludes that a critical perspective on ethnic and racial segregation requiresus to acknowledge the gaps and silences in the data produced and the complexity,and often value-laden nature, of our interpretations.

Introduction

The social and spatial segregation of new migrants and established minorityethnic groups has become a highly politicized and sensitive issue for manynation-states. The new flows of people, ideas and culture associated withglobalization and growing transnational migration have brought increasingsocial and cultural diversity to many cities. This has posed new challengeswith respect to people’s sense of identity, how social groups relate to oneanother and how people organize their lives. Political discourses withinmany of the European Union states, for example, expose anxieties aboutthe apparent failure of some minority ethnic groups to follow the usualpathways towards social and spatial integration, and the potentially divisiveeffects of living with ‘too much’ cultural difference, especially in thecontext of the ‘war on terror’. As state sponsored multiculturalism falters,new questions surrounding the meaning and expression of national identity,citizenship and belonging have all been brought to the fore. Central tothis debate has been a concern with entrenched minority ethnic segregation,

© 2007 The Author Geography Compass 1/5 (2007): 1138–1159, 10.1111/j.1749-8198.2007.00051.xJournal Compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Ethnic and racial segregation: a critical perspective 1139

which all too often is seen as an indicator of a divided society and widersocial malaise.

There is long history of research documenting patterns of immigrantsettlement and the dynamics of minority ethnic concentration and segre-gation over time (e.g. Huttman 1991; Jackson and Smith 1981; Peach1975; van Kempen and Ozuekren 1998). Typical models of minoritysocial and spatial incorporation in North American and European citieshave highlighted a tendency towards ethnic concentration and segregationin the early stages of settlement, usually in poorer (often inner-city) areas,followed by a gradual movement outwards into better neighbourhoodsover time. Some groups, for example black minority populations settlingin predominantly white European cities from the 1950s onwards, have notfollowed the predicted paths. As we shall see, explanations as to why suchgroups continue to cluster in more deprived urban areas are contested.

This article is less concerned with describing the geographies ofethnic and racial segregation than with taking a critical look at howgeographers and others have conceptualized, measured and interpretedpatterns of segregation. Academics are in a key position to challenge mythsabout ethnic clustering and to inform contemporary political andpolicy debates about the implications of segregation for social cohesion.However, as scholars we also have an obligation to think critically aboutthe knowledge we are producing, how it might be used and whetherwe might, unintentionally, be perpetuating some of the prevailing neg-ative images of ethnic segregation.

In looking at the legacy of geographical research into ethnic segregation,and at how our understanding of ethnic patterns has developed, severalkey questions emerge:

First, how can we conceptualize ethnic and racial segregation? Therehas been a reconfiguration of ethnic/race categorizations over time and arethinking of salient indicators of social and cultural difference. In recentyears, for example, there has been a resurgence of scholarly interest in‘ethnicity’, which privileges cultural difference and processes of collectiveidentity formation, as opposed to ‘race’, which acknowledges how visible,racially coded difference is bound up with inequalities in power, statusand rights. Some writers have been critical of this development. Alexander(2002) and Peach (2002), for example, argue that an emphasis on ethnicitycan obscure fault lines in social relations and associated inequalities, andthat ‘race’ remains a meaningful category in people’s everyday lives.

Second, how can we best measure ethnic and racial segregation? Thisraises important questions about the politics of data collection, categori-zation and representation. A range of indicators has been used toenumerate segregation but there is disagreement over what they signify.Questions also arise in relation to the appropriate scale of measurementand whether cross-national comparisons can be meaningful. Furthermore,given the socially constructed nature of data categories and the invisibility

1140 Ethnic and racial segregation: a critical perspective


of some groups in aggregated quantitative analyses, segregation indicesmay obscure as much as they reveal.

Third, levels of ethnic segregation can be expressed in statistical terms,but what does ethnic and racial segregation mean? Peach (1996a) hasreferred to ‘good’ and ‘bad’ segregation, suggesting that ethnic and racialclustering may arise through communality or through discrimination,inequality and exclusion. What are the forces underlying segregation?Importantly, why is minority ethnic segregation, as opposed to the segre-gation of white, mainstream groups, constructed as a problem?

Finally, what sort of knowledge is being produced by geographers andother academics and how might scholarly research on ethnic segregationfeed into a range of social policy debates, for example, on housing oppor-tunities, the dynamics of neighbourhood change, social cohesion, multi-culturalism and integration? Questions arise in relation to whose voice isheard, whose presence is acknowledged and who remains invisible. Thereare also questions to be asked about how sensitive data on ethnicity mightbe used and by whom.

This review addresses these questions by drawing on the significantbody of literature on urban residential segregation from North Americaand Europe. Drawing parallels between countries is not always straightfor-ward; terminologies, categories and data availability vary between countriesand over time. Changing social and political contexts within countries alsoframe new thinking and directions in scholarly inquiry. We can, nevertheless,observe important continuities over time and between nations, which findexpression in an ongoing scholarly as well as policy concern with minorityethnic segregation and its implications.

Conceptualizing Ethnic and Racial Segregation

Ways of thinking about ethnic and racial segregation are reflected in, andshaped by, the way in which we categorize data and how we label thegeographical distributions that we observe. This section explores the socialimplications of defining, labelling and relabelling ethnic groups and thevalue-laden connotations of some of the terminology both academics andpolicy-makers use to describe ethnic and racial clusters.

A critical reading of scholarly and policy research on geographies ofethnic segregation discloses the politicization of officially encoded datacategories and a reconceptualization of notions of ethnicity over time.Early empirical work on ethnic segregation treated data on ethnic groupsas relatively unproblematic (Peach 1975). British researchers, for example,in the 1970s and 1980s commonly used country of birth data, which wasreduced for the purposes of analysis, in many instances, to colour-codedcategories. Ethnicity at this time was usually only ascribed to ‘others’,particularly people who were ‘not white’, and was thus largely constructedin racialized terms. The majority population was seen as an ethnicity free,



neutral group (Pulio 2002). Scholars such as Goldberg (1997) in the USAand Hall (2000) and Alexander (2002) in the UK have traced the transitionfrom a binary divide between ‘black’ and ‘white’ to the current scholarlyand policy interest in diverse, complex and multiple identities, which maycross ethnic boundaries. Their accounts reveal how shifts in racial/ethniccategorizations reflect a particular society’s construction of racial difference,and how the very process of representation can help to reinforce particularconstructions of ethnic and racial divides. Commentators in the UK (Ratcliffe2004) and the USA (Goldberg 1997; Lee 1993) have noted an obsessionwith ‘race-based’ classifications, which has given rise to a proliferation of‘nonwhite’ data categories. In Britain, for example, the census ‘ethnicgroup’ classification introduced in 1991 has been widely criticized for itsfailure to match up to any scholarly understanding of ethnicity (Ahmad1999; Peach 2000). The broad descriptor, ‘White’, it may be argued, is apseudo-racial term, in itself hiding multiple ethnicities (Howard 2006;Peach 2000).

The easy availability of census data on country of birth and, in somecountries, ethnic origin has contributed to the geographer’s preoccupationwith national heritage as an indicator of ethnic difference. As Kong (1990,2001) has observed, much less attention has been devoted to thinkingabout how other powerful determinants of identity, such as religion,intersect with race and ethnicity to produce distinctive geographies. Thereare some important exceptions. Jewish scholars such as Newman (1985)and Waterman and Kosmin (1987) have used synagogue records to chartchanging geographies of a racialized Jewish people over a period of morethan a century. Researchers have also used distinctive South Asian namesrecorded in electoral registers to trace changing patterns of Sikh, Hinduand Muslim settlement (e.g. Medway 1998; Phillips et al. 2007). However,the limited availability of national geographical data on ethno-religiousgroups has been a stumbling block to research on religious segregation incountries like Britain. As Southworth (2005) recounts, the decision overwhether to include a question on religion in the British census remainedhighly politicized and contentious for two decades after it was firstmooted. It was finally included in 2001, and there is now a burgeoninggeographical literature (see, e.g. Howard and Hopkins 2005), which hasemphasized the differentiated experience of minority religious groups ofsimilar ethnic origins. Most strikingly, the disintegration of inner-citysegregation, which now characterizes the British Indian Sikh population,shows few parallels among Muslims of Indian heritage (Phillips et al.2007). The pattern of British Muslim settlement is nevertheless changing,albeit slowly. Following 9/11 and the associated ‘war on terror’, the socialand spatial integration of Muslim minorities in Western societies hasbecome a particular focus for public debate. The political discourse tendsto be one of Muslim segregationism and isolationism. However, closergeographical analysis indicates that while established Muslim communities



are still growing, largely because of natural increase and new householdformation among a youthful population, there are also signs of dispersalinto higher status neighbourhoods, particularly by professionals (Phillips2006; Simpson 2004).

The trend towards the disaggregation of minority ethnic categories andthe enumeration of religious affiliation has provided a framework for a moresensitive analysis of residential segregation and ethnic difference. Distinctivegeographies of smaller ethnic groups are emerging; take the case, forexample, of people of Bangladeshi origin, whose presence has all too often beendeleted in the production of data on ‘Asians’ or the aggregated categoryof ‘Pakistani/Bangladeshi’. However, it is important to acknowledge the easewith which the identities of smaller religious groupings can becomehidden in the eagerness to map newly available data on religion. As Peach(2006) has noted, while most of Britain’s 1.6 million Muslims have theirorigins in the Indian subcontinent (1.2 million), there are many otherethnic groups in Britain who share a Muslim religious identity. Yet todate, we know little about the distinctive geographies of the non-AsianMuslim groups.

The ‘cultural turn’ in social science inquiry has emphasized the insen-sitivity of ethnic origin data to people’s lived experiences, to the formationof a sense of belonging, and to the complexity of their identities (cf.Holloway 2000). Hybrid identities, mixed-race households and the ‘newethnicities’ explored by those such as Back (1996) and Nayak (2003) oftendefy easy categorization through standard empirical ‘ethnic’ categories,which impose rigid boundaries between groups and ‘fix’ these identitiesfor 10 or more years. Multiple and complex identities nevertheless underpineveryday expressions and experiences of difference and form the basis fornew intercultural alliances. There are also other complexities that chal-lenge us to rethink the way in which we conceptualize ethnicity and the waywe might interpret the segregated ethnic geographies that we map. AsSmith and Bailey (2004) highlight, in an increasingly globalized world, wenow have to question the way in which we define the family, the house-hold and its associations. We can no longer assume that minority ethnicfamilies are a localized unit, set on a trajectory of assimilation into thenation-state in which they are living. Rather, families are increasinglylikely to maintain transnational connections, which complicate the linkbetween place of residence and ideas of local and national belonging.

While the data categories we use to map ethnic and racial segregationhave changed quite considerably over time, the same cannot be said forthe terminology that is widely used to describe the patterns observed.Varady’s (2005) international collection of articles on urban segregationillustrates the long-running debate over appropriate descriptors for distinctiveethnic geographies, citing examples that range from the African-American‘ghetto’ to Jewish ‘enclaves’ in Toronto and London. While the distinctiveterms are intended to imply different forces at work in sustaining minority



ethnic segregation (ghettos are broadly viewed as a result of ‘forced’ segre-gation, while enclaves are voluntary), the labels have become so value-ladenthat they can obscure as much as they reveal. Rarely is any minorityethnic concentration a product of one set of forces, as implied in thisdistinction. Furthermore, what are the implications of such labelling forthe people living in these areas and how does it affect people’s lifechances, such as access to work? The negative connotations of the black‘ghetto’ as a place of alienation, disorder, civic disengagement and violentcrime have been explored in the seminal work of David Ley (1974), whoexposed the imagery associated with African-American inner-city as afrontier outpost, and more recently in the British context by authors suchas Bonnett (2002), who explores representations of the ‘dark’ inner-city.‘Ghettoized’ inner areas stand, in contrast, in the public imagination, tothe ‘whiteness’ of many other parts of the city, drawing racialized distinctionsbetween the urban and the rural, and the inner-city and the suburbs.Nevertheless, as Gilroy (2000) reminds us, the meanings we usually associatewith particular spaces labelled as ‘ghettos’ can be inverted to create apositive image out of a stigmatized one; one that shows the positiveattributes of feelings of community and belonging in these areas and the‘ghetto’ as a place for possible popular resistance rather than feelings ofvictimization and exclusion.

Given the political sensitivity of debates about levels of minority ethnicsegregation, particularly as they relate to groups labelled as ‘outsiders’(such as British Muslims), we would do well to exercise caution in theterms that we use to enumerate ethnic groups and to describe theirgeographies. As Phillips (2006) has explored, in the current climate of concernassociated with racialized urban disturbances in some northern Britishcities in 2001 and the global ‘war on terror’, even terms such as ‘segre-gation’ and ‘self-segregation’ have become loaded with meaning, readilyconjuring up images of the unassimilable ‘enemy within’. Cantle’s reportinto the northern disturbances gave rise to a political discourse on theso-called ‘parallel lives’ led by Britain’s segregated Asian and whitepopulations (Community Cohesion Review Team 2001). Images of adivided nation were sharpened by several high profile security alerts,which brought public expressions of doubt as to the loyalties of BritishMuslims in particular. This reawakened claims about the ‘dangers’ of mino-rity ethnic segregation, which was read as a sign of nonbelonging, andbrought government calls for desegregation as part of a move towardsgreater national unity, common values and understanding (CommunityCohesion Panel 2004).

The idea of ‘segregation’ is widely discussed but it is often left undefined.As this article explores, the term has multiple meanings, in a scholarly andin a political sense. Geographical research into ethnic group segregationcommonly focuses on residential clustering, and may use statistical indicatorsof this, which, as the next section explores, are often disputed. There are



also some studies exploring minority ethnic segregation in relation toschooling (e.g. Johnston Wilson and Burgess 2004). However, a sense ofthe complexity of experiences embedded within the term ‘segregation’ isoften missing. As Massey and Denton (1988) in the US context and Simpson(2007) in the British context have signalled, segregation is a multidimen-sional construct. It incorporates ideas relating to the unevenness of agroup’s distribution, the exposure of one group to another (and thus thepotential for contact), ethnic group concentration in particular areas andethnic diversity. As Massey and Denton (1988, 312) suggest, segregationis ‘an ambiguous idea’.

Political and policy discourses readily equate evidence of spatialsegregation with social segregation, particularly the deep ethnic divisionsso often captured in contentious discussions about ‘ghettoization’ (Phillips2005). A focus on the ‘problems’ associated with black minority ethnicsegregation, as opposed to white, serves to illustrate the racialized tone ofthe debate. As Dorling and Thomas (2004) indicate, levels of residentialsegregation for Jewish minorities are in fact higher than for any blackminority ethnic group in the UK, yet Jewish communities are frequentlyreferred to as successful models of integration (Phillips 2006). Furthermore,while the persistence of black minority group segregation is a source ofunease, the observable separation of social classes or housing tenures is not.Yet according to Dorling and Rees (2003), social clustering on the basisof employment state is increasing in Britain while ethnic group clusteringis decreasing. Most obviously, references to minority ethnic ‘ghettos’ andto the process of ‘ghettoization’ can stigmatize already vulnerable andmarginalized populations even further. It is not uncommon for such termsto be used in sensationalized media representations of ethnic segregation,but they have also crept into recent scholarly analyses of ethnic geographiesin Britain and elsewhere (e.g. Johnston et al. 2002). It could be arguedthat the term is not only emotive, but also alarmist, and is perhaps best avoided.

Measuring Ethnic Segregation

There is a long scholarly tradition of seeking to quantify ethnic diversityand residential segregation through statistical indicators, such as indices ofsegregation, dissimilarity and isolation. Notable recent contributions to thisliterature include those by Simpson (2004, 2007) and Johnston et al.(2002) in the UK, Harsman (2006) in Sweden, van Kempen and vanWeesep (1998) and Musterd (2005) in the Netherlands, and Ihlanfeldt andScafidi (2002), Johnston et al. (2004) and Dawkins (2006) in the USA.Such indicators can provide a basis for temporal analyses of changingpatterns of ethnic segregation within cities and regions and they aresometime used for cross-national comparisons. The latter often uselevels of segregation (black) in the USA as an implicit or explicit benchmarkof failed minority ethnic social integration (e.g. Fortuijn et al. 1998; Johnston



et al. 2002; Peach 1996b; Walks and Bourne 2006). As Fortuijn et al. (1998,367) contend ‘the black ghetto in American cities symbolizes the accu-mulation of the miseries of modern Western societies.’

The critical approach of Massey and Denton (1988) and Simpson(2007) to the use of segregation indices helpfully illuminates the complexand multidimensional nature of processes of ethnic segregation, and thepolicy debates pertaining to this, in the USA and UK, respectively. Simp-son’s (2007) conceptualization of segregation builds on Massey and Denton’sdistributional measures of ‘evenness’, ‘exposure’ and locational measuresof ‘concentration’, ‘centralization’ and ‘clustering’, to capture minorityethnic group mobility as well. In doing so, he sheds light on the dynamicprocesses associated with population change (i.e. growth in situ throughnatural increase and immigration) as opposed to population movementtowards, or away from, one’s own ethnic group. Political and policyanxieties about minority ethnic segregation are particularly groundedin concerns about ‘exposure’ or ‘isolation’ (i.e. as encapsulated by the‘parallel lives’ debate in the UK) and movement. The latter has implica-tions for debates about ‘white flight’ and ‘self-segregation’, and the processof withdrawal from social mixing implicated within it. Simpson (2007)argues, in the British context, that the statistical evidence for both of theseprocesses of separation is shaky.

The most commonly used indices of isolation (i.e. the likelihood ofmeeting someone from the same ethnic group locally) and dissimilarity(the proportion of a group that would have to move to mirror the geog-raphy of the general population) are indicative of geographical distributions,but not specific locations. Thus, some researchers have used these indicesas a springboard to examine the association between minority ethnicsegregation, poverty and social inequality. Studies by Massey and Denton(1989) and Friedrichs et al. (2003) in the USA, and Musterd (1998, 2003)and Kearns and Parkinson (2001) in the Netherlands and UK, respectively,have made important contributions to our understanding of the ‘neigh-bourhood effects’ associated with black and minority ethnic segregationin different national contexts. There is strong evidence to suggest thatliving in a highly segregated inner-city neighbourhood can limit residents’chances of escaping poverty and deprivation due to poor social networksand limited local resources and job opportunities, although as Musterd(2003) points out, the potential for social mobility is dependent on levelsof residential segregation, the availability of welfare support and the buoyancyof the labour market. His work in Amsterdam concludes that ethnicinhabitants of ‘moderately’ segregated areas fare no worse than other poorgroups and that ‘desegregation’ policies are less important than educationand welfare programmes for lifting deprived ethnic minorities out of poverty.Nevertheless, the link between long-term residence in areas of deprivationand social exclusion in other spheres of opportunity is well established.For example, Johnston et al. (2002), Somerville and Steele (2002) and



Harrison and Phillips (2003) argue that living within deprived inner-cityareas can generate ‘cumulative disadvantage’ for black and minority ethnicgroups living in Britain, while Andersen (2002) explores the mutuallyreinforcing association between segregated, disadvantaged ethnic groupsand ‘excluded places’ in Denmark. However, minority ethnic segregationand deprivation tends to be racially coded. As the affluence of manyJewish communities in suburban USA and Western Europe testifies,minority ethnic segregation is less likely to be associated with deprivationand disadvantage if you are white (Valins 2003).

Policy-makers clearly have an appetite for ‘scientific’ measures of segregation,which appear to give clear answers to vexed questions on whether ethnicsegregation levels are increasing over time, or indeed approaching USghetto like proportions. However, statistical measures ( like all data) comewith caveats, which politicians and policy-makers are apt to ignore. As wesaw in the previous section, demographic change, along with shiftingconceptualizations of ‘race’, ethnicity, identity and difference, have promptedfrequent reconstructions and relabelling of ethnic categories, renderingthem unstable and transitory. Furthermore, Wright and Ellis (2006) alertus to the growing challenges posed by ‘mixed-race’ and ‘mixed-nativity’households when depicting segregation or computing segregation indices(which rely on counts of individuals as opposed to households). Drawingon research in the USA, they argue that households characterized bymixed-race partnerships exhibit quite different geographies from those ofnonmixed households of similar backgrounds, and that this ‘complication’is only likely to grow.

The limits of describing and interpreting segregation through quan-titative indicators have also been exposed through ongoing discussionsabout the choice of indicators and method of computation. The controversyover the relative merits of particular indicators is illustrated in theexchange between Simpson (2004) and Johnston et al. (2005), and in Wong’s(2004) analysis of the ‘index war’. Some researchers in the USA havesidestepped this thorny issue and taken a simpler approach, categorizinggroups deemed to be highly segregated on all measures (typically African-Americans) as ‘hyper-segregated’ (e.g. Massey and Denton 1989; Wilkesand Iceland 2004). Equally important questions relate to the appropriatescale of segregation analyses. It has long been recognized that segregationindices are sensitive to the size of the areal unit used in the calculation;the smaller the unit, the higher the index and the more segregated thegroups appears. Similarly, computations based on large spatial units, suchas wards or local authority districts, can fail to detect the localized segre-gation of small ethnic groups. Comparisons between cities can be difficultbecause of variations in the size of spatial units and differences in definingurban areas (Krupka 2007). Meanwhile, temporal analyses are hampered bygeographical boundary changes over time. Some scholars have neverthelessdevoted considerable ingenuity to developing sophisticated standardization



techniques in order to satisfy the demand for data comparability (e.g. Reeset al. 2004). Cross-national comparisons also bring challenges. Johnstonet al. (2002) have produced criteria for classifying neighbourhoods inorder to facilitate comparative work. However, as Harrison, Law, et al.’s(2005) review of ethnic minority data in 15 European Union countriesreveals, the accuracy of the data, the descriptors used and the ideologicalpremises underpinning the construction of data categories varies consid-erably between countries, making cross-national comparisons dubious.

The questions posed by politicians and policy-makers with regard tochanging levels of minority ethnic segregation are thus often difficult to answer.As Simpson (2006) has pointed out, statistics can show apparently coun-tervailing trends (i.e. both increasing minority ethnic concentration ininner-city areas and dispersal to new areas as the population grows) andquantitative data are not always easy to interpret. There is no objectivedefinition of ‘intense’ segregation or ‘acceptable’ segregation, and oftenno appreciation of the fact that ethnic clusters can have a transient population;as some households move out they are replaced by others. A heavy relianceon census data has also brought a research focus on segregation at thecity-wide scale, or at the level of the neighbourhood (conceptualized invarious ways). However, it may well be that the street, community centre,work, park and other public spaces are more meaningful sites of ethnicsegregation for people’s everyday lives, especially for women and youngpeople. Interesting explorations of such spaces for ethnic interaction canbe found in the recent work of Dines et al. (2006) and Amin (2002).

Interpreting Ethnic and Racial Segregation

Statistical indicators can give an impression of certainty about the dynamicsof ethnic segregation. However, as the preceding sections suggests, indicatorscan be misleading. This adds to the complexity of the crucial question inthis field of study; what does the ethnic segregation that can be measuredand mapped actually mean? We can think about this question in variousways. What does ethnic clustering mean for the everyday lives of thosewho live in the ‘segregated neighbourhoods’? How do minority ethnicgroups see and use these spaces, and how does this compare with geo-graphical spaces that lie beyond the ethnic clusters? And how is minorityethnic segregation read by others?

The meaning of ethnic segregation is undoubtedly contested in boththe academic literature and in the policy domain. There are two key areas ofdebate, which are reviewed in this section. First, how have ethnic clustersbeen produced and how are they sustained over time, and what does thissay about a minority ethnic group’s status and access to resources such ashousing and jobs? Peach’s (1996a) distinction between ‘good’ and ‘bad’segregation suggests that there may be different forces at work in differentcontexts. Second, what does persistent minority ethnic segregation signify



in terms of the (expected) social and cultural integration of minorityethnic groups? In Britain, the recent political discourse on minority ethnic‘self-segregation’ arising from Ted Cantle’s report into the racialized urbandisturbances in 2001 has implied that British Muslims, in particular, arenot integrating, but are withdrawing from British society to live ‘parallellives’ (Community Cohesion Review Team 2001; Phillips 2006). But thisinference rests on an oversimplified view of Muslim identity and behav-iour, which underestimates differences that arise through generation, gender,class, lifestyle, localities, etc. There are thus complex questions to be askedabout the extent to which residential segregation can be seen as an indicatorof social integration.

FORCES PRODUCING AND SUSTAINING SEGREGATION

There are a number of overviews of academic research into the forcesunderlying minority ethnic segregation in Western European, NorthAmerican and Australian cities, most notably by Huttman (1991), vanKempen and Ozuekren (1998), Phillips (1998), Goldberg (1998) and Johnstonet al. (2002). These studies debate the salience of minority ethnic choiceversus constraint, and the power of individual agency versus institutionaldiscrimination in shaping the geographies of minority ethnic segregationand deprivation so commonly observed across a range of national contexts.

The positive attributes of ethnic clustering have been well documented(e.g. Huttman 1991; Peach 1996a). Extended social and cultural relations,social support, a sense of belonging and well-developed community infra-structures may give rise to a sense of well-being for some members ofminority ethnic groups, particularly in the early stages of migration. Thisapplies especially, but not exclusively, to the older generation, to women andto those unable to speak the language of their host country. Many familiesfrom minority ethnic backgrounds still prefer to live in neighbourhoodswith some people from similar backgrounds after several generations, bothfor cultural reasons and, in the case of racialized minorities, for a sense ofsecurity (Modood et al. 1997; Phillips et al. 2007). However, in the absenceof constraint, it might be expected that groups would gradually follow thepath of Jewish minorities and migrate, along with their institutions, toestablish new community spaces in better residential areas over time.

The continuing association between black and minority ethnic segre-gation, deprivation and poverty is a clear indication that exclusionaryforces also play a role in shaping the geographies of racialized groups. AsSibley (1995) has argued, more powerful groups can use a range of strat-egies to construct physical and symbolic boundaries between themselvesand those depicted (in the media, political discourse and historical repre-sentations) as threatening ‘others’. Drawing on psychoanalytic theory, Sibleyargues that ideas about ‘self ’ (i.e. who you are) tend to prompt exclusionarypractices designed to keep ‘others’ (in this case racialized ‘others’) at a distance.



The resulting ‘purification of space’ can manifest itself in segregatedneighbourhoods, workplaces and social spaces. There is certainly ampleevidence to suggest that socially constructed ideas about ‘race’ and‘difference’ have produced and sustained segregationist practices in thehousing market and other spheres (see, e.g. Galster and Godfrey 2005;Harrison, Phillips, et al. 2005; Phillips 1998; Smith 1989; Souza Briggs2005). These studies indicate that institutionalized discrimination byhousing market agencies (estate agents, financial institutions, landlordsand social housing institutions) and individuals has contributed to thepersistence of black and minority ethnic segregation in the more deprived(usually) inner-city neighbourhoods. Meanwhile minority ethnic housingoptions may also be constrained by racist harassment. As Phillips et al.(2007) have observed, anxieties about living in the suburbs or other ‘whiteareas’ has deterred some British Asian families from moving into betterareas. Studies by Third et al. (1997), Chahal and Julienne (1999) and Bowesand Sim (2002) have all provided evidence to show that some minorityethnic households in the UK are prepared to sacrifice better quality housingin order to achieve greater security from harassment.

Nevertheless, even the geographies of ethnic groups with long historiesof exclusion are beginning to change, and growing numbers of black andminority ethnic households are moving to higher status areas of Americanand British cities (Alba and Nee 2003; Rees and Butt 2004). New oppor-tunities are opening up and some groups have been successful in circum-venting discrimination, although there are usually ‘ethnic penalties’ ( likehigher property prices) to be paid (Karn 1997). The continuing racializationof space continues to circumscribe opportunities and mobility for many,limiting their rights of access to, and use of, certain areas of the city.Contests over space manifest themselves in displays of resistance by somewhite households when minority ethnic households try to move into ‘their’neighbourhoods, and in disputes over the siting of community facilities(Gale and Naylor 2002; Phillips et al. 2007). As Alexander (2002) and Nayak(2003) have argued, the power to exclude and the advantages accruing towhite people vary by class, age/lifestyle and locality. Nevertheless, whitenessstill tends to be seen as normal and thus brings with it greater ease of accessto white schools, workplaces and suburbs for those who are not markedout as ‘different’ (Bonnett 2000; Jackson 1998).

While authors such as Sibley tend to place great store on the power ofdominant groups to exclude, thus perhaps underplaying the ability of minorityethnic groups to create their own spaces, such arguments highlight thecapacity of ‘imaginary geographies’ of difference to produce unequalsocial and spatial divisions. It is clear that racialized divisions fracture indifferent ways in different countries and that they tend to shift with time.In Europe and North America, groups perceived to threaten white statusand privilege (i.e. the purity of whiteness) are commonly black minorityethnic groups, particularly those associated with a country’s colonial past



(Bonnett 2000; Vanderbeck 2006). However, the focus of anxiety, and theconstruction of new ‘folk devils’, tends to alter as political contextschange. As Gainer (1972) has documented, Jewish migrants to Britainwere once constructed as an ‘alien race’ and were socially and spatiallyexcluded. Public and political attention then turned to migrants fromIndia, Pakistan and the Caribbean in the 1950s and 1960s, when racializeddifference associated with colonial minorities were seen as a threat. In 21stcentury Britain, religion has once again become a powerful social andspatial divider as Islamophobia marginalizes Muslims, who in Alexander’s(2002, 564) words are currently represented as the ‘ultimate Other’.

SEGREGATION AS A SIGNIFIER OF INTEGRATION

Levels of minority ethnic segregation are often regarded as a lens throughwhich to measure a country’s progress towards an integrated and stablesociety. Studies of white immigrant groups in the USA, depicting patternsof ethnic residential succession and dispersal over time, have contributedto our understanding of the ‘normal’ pathway to integration. Enduringpatterns of minority ethnic segregation, or so-called ‘ghettoization’ inpoorer residential areas, are all too often thought to symbolize a lack ofsocial integration.

There has been much scholarly and political debate about the associationbetween spatial segregation and social integration, and about appropriateindicators for measuring levels of social inclusion. This debate is under-pinned by differing views on the expected end-point of the process ofminority incorporation into wider society, as is reflected in the terminologyused to describe this process (Favell 2003). The most commonly usedterms, ‘assimilation’ and ‘integration’, may be used interchangeably.However, as Favell (1998) points out, these terms have become politicized(and, one might argue, racialized) and are indicative of different policyapproaches to incorporating social and cultural difference. Each is rootedin a different state vision of the ‘ideal’ nation. While the concept ofassimilation is still widely used within the American academic literature(e.g. Alba and Nee 1997, 2003), British scholars tend to shy away fromthe term because of its association with a process of minority inclusionfounded on cultural intolerance and the loss of minority ethnic social andspatial identities. In recent years, the concept of integration has been morewidely favoured. This has connotations of a two-way process of adaptationinvolving both the receiving and the minority populations, although asCastles et al. (2002) have explored, policy discourses on integration tendto be highly politicized and are imbued with shifting, multiple meanings.

A long history of empirical research in the USA and Europe hasattempted to measure minority ethnic incorporation into the receivingsociety through a range of variables. Most commonly, socio-economicvariables have been used as indicators of structural integration, while social



interaction indices have been used as a proxy for ethnic difference (e.g.Bolt et al. 2002; Musterd 2003). While some authors have portrayedintegration as a linear process of transition, others (such as Alba and Nee2003; Portes and Zhou 1993) have argued that there is a multidimensionalprocess of ‘segmented assimilation’, whereby migrants assimilate in someareas of life and not others. A number of factors shaping the path andspeed of integration have been identified. These range from the culturalto the structural. As explored above, racialized exclusion and disadvantagemay inhibit migrants’ economic progress and opportunities for social andspatial mixing. However, some migrants may also resist full social andcultural integration, investing both energy and resources in strategiesdesigned to preserve their distinctive socio-cultural identities. As Gilroy(1987) points out, strategies of cultural resistance may develop partly inresponse to the experience of exclusion and may be stronger in youngermembers of a minority ethnic group than in the migrant generation.

Whatever the group, the patterns and processes of social and spatialincorporation are likely to be differentiated over time and to vary betweenplaces. Changing economic conditions, for example, may disrupt thesocial and spatial trajectories taken by past minority ethnic groups, whatevertheir heritage. Borjas (1999), in the US context, and Vertovec (2006) inBritain have highlighted how the arrival of new streams of migrants mayimpact adversely on the economic opportunities open to more establishedminorities. Changing political circumstances can also interrupt the processof social and spatial integration. Boal (1999, 595), for example, recountshow the residential segregation of Belfast’s Protestants and Catholicswould increase in response to outbreaks of terrorist violence, because ofanxieties about security and ‘micro-scale ethnic cleansing’. Similarly, theadvent of the ‘war on terror’ has contributed to the demonization ofMuslim minorities in the West, creating a climate of suspicion, which hashindered both Muslim access to resources and their spatial mobility (Amin2002; Phillips 2006). Research by Hopkins and Smith (2007), for example,highlights the way in young Muslim men in Glasgow pursue strategies of‘invisibility’ when negotiating the city and how they opt to live in areasthey perceive to be safe as a means of minimizing feelings of anxiety andinsecurity. Their strategies, the authors suggest, are rooted in a sense thatMuslim ‘belonging’ in 21st century Britain is conditional.

So what does minority ethnic segregation signify? In an era of multi-culturalism, distinctive ethnic neighbourhoods, such as Chinatown andBanglatown in London, are often seen as exotic places; as spaces for excursionsand entertainment. However, public and political anxieties about otherspaces of persistent minority ethnic segregation remain. Political discoursesare apt to represent minority ethnic segregation as a sign of failure; theresult of minority ethnic groups’ reluctance to adapt, and/or the outcomeof the misguided precepts of multiculturalism. As Harrison, Law, et al. (2005)have indicated, the picture is similar across Western Europe. Despite different



histories of immigration and varied approaches to integration, the 15European Union states reviewed all tended to construct minority ethnicsegregation as a ‘problem’ and to perceive it as a hindrance to the ‘normal’process of assimilation/integration.

The prevailing view that minority ethnic segregation is a problemdeserves critical comment. First, while minority ethnic (especially black)segregation tends to be problematized, the segregation of white people inthe suburbs and in the protective, gated communities of our cities drawslittle attention. Contrary to popular imaginings, the highest levels of ethnicsegregation in multicultural cities usually occur on the white periphery(Stillwell and Phillips 2006), but this is simply viewed as normal. Second,minority ethnic segregation tends to be pathologized. While it is importantrecognize the inequalities and structural disadvantage associated withpersistent segregation in deprived inner-urban areas, a number of authorshave called for a more balanced perspective that acknowledges the positiveand negative attributes of ethnic clustering (e.g. Marcuse 2005; Phillips2006; Qadeer 2005). These may include a sense of security and wellbeingand good networks of support, as well as potential economic advantagesderived from the marketing of ethnic goods and spaces (Peleman 2002;Qadeer 2005; Walton-Roberts 2002).

Finally, the association between residential segregation, the experienceof social integration and feelings of belonging are uncertain. It is not easyto ‘read off ’ integration from residential segregation. The strength of localbonds to, and within, a neighbourhood is likely to vary between differentgroups of people (Ellen and Turner 1997). Young children, older peopleand women with childcare responsibilities may, for example, have morespatially bounded sets of connections and networks than men in paidwork or young adults, although this may itself be complicated by class,income and life-style. The everyday experience of segregation and integrationcan also be quite different in different places. As Keith (2005) elaboratesfor London housing estates, Simpson et al. (2007) reveal for the northernEnglish textile towns of Oldham and Rochdale, and Phillips et al. (2007)recount for Leeds and Bradford, the experience and perception of vulner-ability (e.g. to attack or exclusion) and isolation by minority ethnicgroups, and the depth of racialized divisions and tensions, varies accordingto local histories, housing conditions, job opportunities and local politics.All contribute to what Amin and Thrift (2002, 291) have called the ‘localmicrocultures of inclusion and exclusion’, although perhaps one of themost pervasive differences emerges between areas affected by the activitiesof far-right groups such as the British National Party (which serve tocreate a climate of suspicion and resentment) and more inclusive cosmo-politan spaces (Keith 2005).

The role of locality as an indicator of national identity and ethnicintegration is also changing. While on the one hand the research of thosesuch as Nayak (2003) and Back (1996) has shown the importance of local



places in shaping ethnic identity, other authors have argued that nationaland transnational connections and postnational forms of citizenship mayrender the neighbourhood relatively insignificant for some (e.g. Kaplanand Holloway 2001; Kennett and Forrest 2006; Soysal 1994; Vertovec2001). The time may be coming for research into ethnic segregation toshift its gaze to incorporate spheres of interaction (e.g. work, virtual spacesand social networks) that transcend residential spaces.

Producing Geographical Knowledge: Some Concluding Thoughts on Segregation

As new streams of labour migrants and people seeking asylum join estab-lished minority ethnic groups, old models and modes of understanding ofminority ethnic segregation and incorporation are being challenged. AsVertovec (2006) has argued, this new ‘super-diversity’ has implications forpublic discourse, policy debate and academic inquiry. Within the publicdomain, questions about how to accommodate distinctive ethnic and religiousidentities and what to do about minority ethnic segregation have onceagain been brought to the fore. The debates have acquired added poignancyin the light of the ‘war on terror’. Now, the lack of integration presumedto be associated with ‘self-segregation’ is cast not only as an issue of nationalunity, but security. The tone of much of the debate has been one of‘desegregation’ (Phillips 2006).

The politicized nature of the discourse on minority ethnic segregationand integration underlines the sensitivity of the knowledge produced byacademic researchers. At a time when academics are enjoined to participatein ‘knowledge transfer’ and ‘user engagement’, we have more cause thanever to pause to reflect on how scholarly argument, statistics and visualrepresentations of minority ethnic segregation might be used beyond theacademy. As Simpson (2006, 6) points out, academics are ‘not immune tothe accepted ideology of the time.’ Just as 19th and early 20th centurygeographers and demographers were steeped in the racist eugenic discoursesof the era, so we see a tendency for recent academic research to constructminority ethnic segregation as a problem (see Ballard 1997 and Simpson2006, for a critique). As explored earlier, widely used official ethniccodings, derived from the census, are far from neutral. Not only do theyreflect societal readings of salient racial and ethnic divisions at a particularpoint in time, but they also have the power to re-inscribe ethnic catego-rization for a decade or more. Officially sanctioned ethnic codes tend totransform nebulous categories into firmly bounded ones, and erase differenceswithin them. Some researchers have adopted them uncritically; some facea dilemma when engaging, for example, in work for policy-makers whohave long relied on such categories.

Maps of ‘segregated’ populations and ‘ethnic group’ statistics not onlyhelp to construct difference, but also they can unintentionally contributeto it. The ease with which academic research can be drawn into highly



politicized debates on segregation was illustrated in 2005 when an Australiangeographer, Mike Poulsen, presented a statistical analysis of ‘ghettoformation’ to an academic audience at the Royal Geographical Society.His conclusions were reported in the British media and were picked upby the Chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, Trevor Phillips,who incorporated them into an emotive speech, proclaiming that Britainwas ‘sleepwalking its way to US style ghettos’ (Phillips 2005). Thisbrought a spate of claims and counter-claims from academics and policy-makers about the level of segregation in the UK and its implications andfostered a sense of unease among Britain’s minority ethnic communities(Greater London Authority 2005).

Scholars thus need to reflect on how they present their research, whatfindings are emphasized and what silences remain. While some minorityethic groups have been ‘over-enumerated’, others remain invisible inethnic statistics. Gypsies and travelling people in the UK present an inter-esting example. A statistical count of this population is regularly undertakenby the government twice a year, yet this ethnic group generally liesbeyond the public gaze (sensationalist and negative tabloid headlines arean obvious exception). This population is rarely considered in policydebates on equality and diversity and has received little academic attentioncompared with immigrants from the colonies (important exceptions areSibley (1987) and Vanderbeck (2005)). This reflects a bias in scholarlythinking about ethnicity; a marginalization of this group in the academicgeographical imagination as well as in public discourse. The Commissionfor Racial Equality recently described the segregation, exclusion anddiscrimination affecting gypsies and travelling people as one of the lastbastions of acceptable racism in the UK, but we hear few calls for change.

A critical reading of geographical research on ethnic and racial segre-gation requires us to acknowledge the gaps and silences in the knowledgeproduced and the complexity, and often value-laden nature, of our inter-pretations. Wright and Ellis (2006, 286) have called for scholars to ‘re-imagine,literally and otherwise, how we map others’ and Simpson (2006) pointsto the long heritage of the Radical Statistics Group in challenging ‘false’claims about segregation. Dorling and Simpson (1999) remind us thatindividual scholars should be sensitive to the potential impact of their data,which can so easily become politicized. There is an obligation, for example,to ensure that the knowledge produced does not fuel anxiety on emotiveissues such as immigration, segregation and integration. Academic institutionsalso have a part to play. The Royal Geographical Society’s press officedisseminated the controversial story about ghetto formation recountedabove. Past experience also indicates that universities, through their pressoffices, are not reticent to engage in ‘spin’ or to pick up on the mostsensational academic stories, which could have damaging repercussions.Academics are well placed to contribute significantly to important socialdebates; there is, for example, a growing body of research that points to the



diversity of identities, experiences and expectations hidden within stand-ardized ethnic categories. This should help us to move beyond simplisticinterpretations that set racially coded ‘others’ apart.

Short Biography

Deborah Phillips is a Senior Lecturer in Geography and Deputy Directorof the Centre for Ethnicity and Racism Studies at the University of Leeds.She has researched widely on aspects of ‘race’ and ethnicity in the fieldsof housing, social policy and demography. She has also acted as an advisorto government bodies and the voluntary sector. Her more recent researchhas investigated minority ethnic household preferences and boundedchoices, questions of ethnic segregation, relocation and dispersal andminority ethnic identities. Her publications include Housing and Black andMinority Ethnic Communities: Review of the Evidence Base (2003, with M.Harrison), Parallel Lives? Challenging Discourses of British Muslim Self-Segregation(2006, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 24) and Housing, ‘Race’and Community Cohesion (2005, with M. Harrison and others).

Note

* Correspondence address: Deborah Phillips, Geography Department, University of Leeds,Woodhouse Lane, Leeds, West Yorkshire LS2 9JT, UK. E-mail: [email protected].

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ethnic and racial segregation: a critical perspective

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