Ethnic differences in realising desires to leave urban neighbourhoods.

Selective mobility into and out of urban neighbourhoods is one of the main driving forces of segregation. Earlier research has found group differences in who wants to leave or who leaves certain types of neighbourhoods. A factor that has received little attention so far is that some residents will have a desire to leave their neighbourhood, but are unable to do so. If there are differences between population groups in the realisation of desires to leave the neighbourhood, this might lead to involuntary segregation. This paper uses a unique combination of register data and survey data. We combine data from a large housing survey in the Netherlands (WoON) with longitudinal register data from the Netherlands (SSD) which contains individual-level information on residential mobility histories. This allows us to study whether households with a desire to leave their neighbourhood do realise this desire and which households are successful in leaving which neighbourhoods. A more thorough insight in who wants to leave which neighbourhoods but is unable to do so will contribute to a better understanding of selective mobility and segregation. We find that ethnic minorities and low-income households are less likely to realise a desire to leave their neighbourhood. We expected that ethnic minorities would be especially unsuccessful in realising desires to leave minority concentration neighbourhoods; however, for none of the ethnic groups we found an effect of neighbourhood ethnic composition on the realisation of desires to leave.

Residential outcomes of forced relocation: lifting a corner of the veil on neighbourhood selection.

Fear of the detrimental effects of ethnic segregation has pervaded the debate on the population composition of cities and neighbourhoods. However, little is known about mechanisms underlying the spatial sorting of ethnic minorities. Hence, policies aimed at desegregation may result in exactly the opposite - that is, new ethnic concentrations and segregation. This paper studies the residential outcomes of 658 forced movers from urban restructuring areas in The Hague. Compared with "native" Dutch (those with both parents born in the Netherlands), ethnic minorities report neighbourhood improvement less often and are more likely to stay within or move into other ethnically concentrated neighbourhoods. These differences are not fully explained by differences in individual characteristics, resources, institutional factors, pre-relocation preferences or other relocation outcomes. Ethnic specificities in neighbourhood choices thus remain a pressing issue for further research.