Segregation as a process maintaining diversity

Overview

Segregation in the context of ethnic diversity, interface area and how segregated schooling affects the persistence of ethnic diversity.

What you need to know

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Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   What is segregation in the context of ethnic diversity?

   Model answer

   Segregation is the separation of ethnic groups from one another within the same society. Residential segregation, the clustering of groups in different neighbourhoods, is the most visible form, but it is usually accompanied by separation in schooling, workplaces, shops, leisure, sport and friendship networks. It is measured as a matter of degree, not as a simple presence or absence, and it can exist at several scales at once, between regions, between districts of a city and between adjoining streets.

2. 2

   Explain how segregation acts to maintain ethnic diversity rather than merely reflect it.

   Model answer

   By reproducing distinctiveness across generations. Where groups live apart, each sustains its own places of worship, schools, shops, media and clubs; children grow up among co-ethnic peers; the heritage language remains in daily use; and marriage partners are met within the group, so intermarriage rates stay low. Everyday contact between groups is limited, so stereotypes go unchallenged and each community's account of shared history is repeated within it. Differences that might otherwise erode are therefore renewed.

3. 3

   What choice factors lead people to live among others of the same ethnic group?

   Model answer

   Access to group institutions such as places of worship, community schools, specialist shops and burial provision; the practical support of relatives and neighbours in finding housing, work and childcare; the comfort of a shared language for those less fluent in the majority language; a sense of safety from harassment; and the wish to raise children within the group's culture and to find marriage partners locally. These are positive reasons for clustering that would operate even in the complete absence of discrimination.

4. 4

   What constraint factors produce segregation?

   Model answer

   Discrimination by landlords, estate agents and lenders that steers or refuses applicants; allocation practices in social housing that place groups in particular estates; income differentials that confine a group to the cheapest housing areas; lack of information about, or contacts in, other districts; and hostility, harassment or intimidation that makes moving into certain areas unsafe. Where these operate, the concentration is imposed rather than chosen, and it is likely to coincide with the poorest housing and services.

5. 5

   Why is it difficult to separate voluntary from involuntary segregation in practice?

   Model answer

   Because the same observed pattern can result from either, and usually results from both interacting. A household that says it prefers to live among its own group may be expressing a genuine preference for institutions and support, or may have learned that other areas are unwelcoming, or both. Discrimination in one generation produces concentration that later households then have positive reasons to join. Since motives cannot be read off a map, researchers use interviews, testing studies of landlord and lender behaviour, and evidence on harassment alongside the residential data.

6. 6

   How is residential segregation measured?

   Model answer

   Chiefly with indices calculated from small-area population data. The index of dissimilarity expresses the percentage of one group that would have to move to a different area for the two groups to be distributed identically, giving a single figure from 0 for complete mixing to 100 for complete separation. The location quotient compares a group's share of the population in a small area with its share in the wider region, so values above one identify over-representation and values below one under-representation; the location quotient is a technique reserved to A2. Both need care, because results change with the size of the areas used.

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