Ethnic Residential Segregation: A Theoretical Synthesis and Empirical Review

Despite the prolific amount of empirical researches conducted and theories propounded for the issue of ethnic residential segregation, there has been little attempt at systematically comparing and integrating these researches and theories. Massey claims this is an attempt at such needed integration in a coherent and comprehensive manner, bringing together the theoretical insights of several different branches of ecological theory and the results of empirical researches conducted in six countries to assay these theories. So, specifically, here is what has been done in this article. First, Massey proposes an integrated version of ecological theory of ethnic residential segregation that combines the insights of classic principles of human ecology model (i.e., the Chicago School), social area analysis, and factorial ecology. This integration ultimately leads to the six terse propositions of the general law of ethnic residential segregation, of which three of them describe the processes of "succession" while the other three describe the processes of "assimilation". These six propositions are examined and assayed in light of the empirical evidence drawn from the researches conducted in six different nations. Basically, the result is that evidence from all six nations more or less support the basic insight drawn from the ecological theory of ethnic residential segregation.
 

Theoretical Model

As noted earlier, some of the basic insights of newly integrated ecological model is from the old Chicago School of urban sociology. While this school had some of its own weaknesses, as its assumption of the particular industrial regime of the era, and often contradictory ideas propounded by some of its main proponents as Park, Burgess and Wirth, the usefulness of some of their basic insights remains. This is the idea of successive residential development based on the concentric zone model, in which higher social classes are constantly moving outward from the center of the city looking for better residential areas while the newly arrived lower classes (who are often immigrants) come into fill these older places vacated by the higher class. Meanwhile, such basic insight is complemented by the ideas from social area analysis and its offspring factorial analysis. They basically hold that social and residential differentiation are a function of the level of societal development. As societies grow economically, the residents become more heterogeneous in three respects: socioeconomic status, family structure, and ethnic background. The increasing level of complication in the demographic characteristics of residents would in turn be reflected in the spatial organization of the metropolis, these models maintain. Within the urban environment, residential space is defined by the intersection of the factors of social status, family status, and ethnic status.

These basic insights are applied specifically to deal with the issue of ethnic segregation. In terms of ethnic segregation, the most basic theoretical claim is that it is generated through the interplay of two opposing spatial forces: concentration and dispersion. Let's look at factors that foster each of the processes of concentration and dispersion in turn. First, the concentration. This process is rooted in the spatial differentiation of the urban economy, and reinforced by the nature of immigrants and immigration. It is "rooted in the spatial differentiation of the urban economy", in the sense that as a general rule - the more specialized the pattern of industrial land use so that industrial areas are concentrated and separated from the suburban residential areas, the more conducive the situation is for the ethnic segregation. This is basically because as newly arrived immigrants are not economically well to do yet and cannot afford the transportation costs, so that they would have no choice but live nearby their workplaces in a fairly concentrated and segregated fashion. This structural segregation tended to be reinforced by "chain migration", in that successive migrations did not occur in just any random fashion but rather people tended to follow their relatives and friends. This successive migration by these followers tended to further increase the level of ethnic concentration. Meanwhile, a second social mechanism that fosters segregation is the institutionalization that occurred in ethnic neighborhoods - making it more attractive for the later arriving immigrants to settle in these places where they can expect social and material support from their compatriots. The third factor encouraging ethnic segregation is the social distance between concerned ethnic groups. That is, the more culturally, economically and socially ethnic groups perceive of each other as being alien, the faster the processes of succession and segregation tend to be.

Let's turn to the side of assimilation. This process tends to be fostered by the forces of acculturation and socioeconomic mobility. That is, the more culturally adjusted and the more upwardly mobile the immigrants become, the more they will be assimilated in terms of residential pattern also. However, the important point here is that these two processes by themselves are usually not enough but rather they must be accompanied by the lessening of forces fostering segregation due to the industrial organization. That is, as industrial areas become dispersed and both employment and residence decentralized, people become less tied to the workplace. This change in urban land use pattern is one crucial factor as it lessens the structural pressure for ethnic segregation - and in fact this is what has happened in many of the industrial nations since the WW II.

So, in effect, we have briefly looked at counterbalancing mechanisms of concentration and dispersion. Six propositions that summarize these points are listed in pages 320 - 1.

The rest of the article is the review of empirical works from six nations in order to test the resulting six propositions. Basically, the conclusion is that in all six nations the ecological model does seem to fit okay. In fact, overall the pattern is remarkably similar, and most of the basic insights of the ecological model fit well. In general, these data from six nations reveal that: When industrial land use was concentrated and residential and employment areas were highly differentiated, ethnic groups arriving under this type of social condition tended to be highly segregated. In turn, the level of ethnic segregation mitigated after the spatial organizational pattern for residential and employment areas became decentralized. Meanwhile, the indices for acculturation and socioeconomic mobility are overall highly correlated with residential desegregation for most of ethnic groups in all six nations. Further, the social and cultural distance between ethnic groups also seem to have large influences on the pattern of residential organization, as in general the more culturally "distant" two groups are more highly segregated two groups tend to be (e.g., in Western Europe, while groups as Germans, French and Scandinavians are in general not strongly segregated from the native population, Eastern Europeans and Italians tend to be a little more segregated than these, while Turks and Greeks are most highly segregated).