Parallel society: Myth or reality? A question for policy makers

Abstract

The Danish government has produced a public document to announce that deviations from societal values were tolerated no more. They denounced the presence of "alternative values" areas (called "parallel societies"), located mostly in areas where low or no income residents live in social/public housing (officially called "ghetto areas" or ghettoområder ). Through the means of agent-based computational simulation this paper uses a nested "model in a model" approach to study the issue by introducing a policy-simulation-policy loop. The paper is a first attempt to explore whether programmatic policy indications have some actual reflection on the formation of these "alternative values" areas. Results suggest ways in which a sustainable governmental policy on ghetto areas shall not start from assuming divergence where there is none, showing the value of the technique developed for this paper.

Moving for Diversity or Moving for the Kids? The Micro-Dynamics of Residential Relocations During Family Formation of Immigrants and Natives

“…Describing “ethnic colonies” in total as “parallel societies” is, according to Ceylan ( 2006 , p. 256), inappropriate because of their different social segments with various including and excluding functions that satisfy the social, cultural and economic needs of the colony's inhabitants. Additionally, the taste for own culture and segregation assumed in the concept of “parallel societies' has been criticized for neglecting immigrants” disadvantages on housing markets, but also for normative reasons (Secchi and Herath, 2019 , p. 3). If immigrants' residential choices were driven by preferences for own-group neighbors, they would likely end up in homogenous ethnic minority neighborhoods.…”