Ethnic Residential Segregation: A Family Matter? An Integration of Household Composition Characteristics into the Residential Segregation Literature

Abstract

The ethnic residential segregation literature seldom considers household characteristics, despite their importance for residential mobility. This study offers a first step to amend this lacuna by focussing on the relationship between marital status and the presence of children on the one hand and the extent to which ethnic majority households live segregated on the other. We investigated this association with data from the 2011 Belgian Census. We performed a conditional logit model on a sample of households formed by young adults of Belgian origin living in the metropolitan areas of Antwerp (N = 11,241), Brussels (N = 6690), Charleroi (N = 3483), Ghent (N = 7825) and Liège (N = 5873). It appeared that households with children are less likely than childless households to live in diverse neighbourhoods. Considering partnership status, we find that singles are the most likely to live in diverse neighbourhoods. Amongst the couples without children, those couples in legal cohabitation are less likely to live in diverse neighbourhoods than married or other unmarried couples, while married couples with children are less likely to do so when comparing to unmarried couples with children, both legally cohabiting and others. We, therefore, conclude that it is important to consider (the interaction between) partnership status and the presence of children when studying ethnic residential segregation.

Ethnic residential segregation: A matter of ethnic minority household characteristics?

“…Therefore, we have to reject our first hypothesis, which predicted a positive association between the presence of children and the probability of living among the own ethnic group. Moreover, this finding contradicts what we found for households of Belgian origin, where the presence of children was an important factor when trying to understand how segregated these households live (Coenen et al, forthcoming). This finding could point towards the importance of discrimination in determining where ethnic‐minority households live.…”

“…Moreover, financial constraints could also keep these male singles in neighbourhoods with many coethnics. This finding would be consistent with findings for ethnic‐minority singles in the United States (Marsh & Iceland, ) and ethnic‐majority singles in Belgium (Coenen et al, forthcoming).…”

“…Moreover, this association is independent of the socioeconomic status of the households. Similar self‐segregating patterns were also found when we investigated households of Belgian origin in Belgium's five largest cities (Coenen et al, forthcoming). At the same time, however, discrimination has already been identified in the two investigated cities (Van der Bracht, Coenen, & Van de Putte, ; Verhaeghe, Coenen, Demart, Van der Bracht, & Van de Putte, ).…”

“…This confirms the second hypothesis. When comparing this finding with households of Belgian origin (Coenen et al, forthcoming), we find the same differences for these Belgian households when children are present in the household but not when children are absent. Differences between married and unmarried couples in, for example, the countries of birth of the partners, or different family‐oriented norms and values might explain these findings.…”

“…Moreover, ethnic‐majority households with children are found to avoid ethnically diverse neighbourhoods (Coenen, Verhaeghe, & Van de Putte, forthcoming; Goyette, Iceland, & Weininger, ). Qualitative studies in Flanders demonstrate Belgian households' motivations for segregating (Meeus, De Decker, & Claessens, ; Schuermans, Meeus, & Decker, ).…”