Using Population Mobility Data to Measure Black-White Residential Segregation in the COVID-19 Pandemic

Racial and ethnic residential segregation has long been the central focus of stratification and inequality research, and it is a linchpin of racial stratification in the U.S. Sociologists and demographers have developed a series of spatial or aspatial measures to capture distinct aspects of segregation. Although the recent development of segregation measures, for instance, spatial exposure, accounts for spatial proximity among different groups, it is static and ignores the social connectedness dimension. This article uses population mobility across communities to correct the potential bias in spatial segregation measures. As population mobility is highly racially segregated, we modify the conventional spatial isolation index by adding an extra layer of social connectedness between communities to create a socially and spatially weighted segregation measure. We then use this spatial and social segregation measure to quantify the level of blacks' isolation with whites in the local neighboring communities. Our approach can be extended to other segregation measures and provide a new perspective to assess racial segregation in the U.S.

Fertility of Roma Minorities in Central and Eastern Europe

We analyse Roma fertility in four neighbouring countries in Central and Eastern Europe with a large Roma minority: in Hungary, Slovakia, Romania and Serbia. The sources of data are the respective national population censuses from 2011. Fertility is measured at the birth cohort level as the average number of children ever born. We make an international comparison of the fertility of Roma and non-Roma majority population women on the basis of completed education. In the case of Hungary, we also explore how the correlation between fertility and ethnic identity is modified when completed education and ethnic residential segregation are controlled. The fertility of Roma women is far above the majority population average in all birth cohorts and in each country. Educational attainment modifies this relationship. The fertility of highly educated Roma and majority population women is converging. The exposure to majority behaviour also has an effect. The lower the level of ethnic residential segregation, the smaller the difference between the fertility of Roma and majority population women. Completed education and residential segregation may exert different forces at the two ends of the educational hierarchy when their joint effect is explored. At the upper end of the social hierarchy, neither segregation nor ethnicity matters; at the lower end, however, both exposure to ethnic majority behaviour and ethnicity matter.

Groups' contribution to shaping ethnic residential segregation: a dynamic approach

Some have argued it is possible to infer different groups’ contributions to ethnic residential segregation from their individual neighborhood preferences. From this perspective, natives tend to be more segregation-promoting than non-natives, since they prefer neighborhoods where they are the majority. It remains unclear, however, whether this holds when one evaluates their contributions to segregation within a dynamic perspective. Using register data from Statistics Sweden, I define and model ten different groups’ residential behavior based on their ethnicity and family composition. I thereby simulate the residential mobility of the full population of Stockholm municipality residents from 1998 to 2012. Even though my results at the micro-level are consistent with previous studies, the simulation results show that foreign singles’ mobility patterns are more segregation-promoting than any other groups, since this group shows a greater in-group feedback effect regarding choice of new neighborhoods, an effect that increases their flow from low-to-high segregated neighborhoods progressively. My results suggest that (1) integration initiatives would be more efficient if focused on this particular group and (2) a proper evaluation of micro-behaviors’ implications for macro-patterns of segregation requires a dynamic approach accounting for groups’ heterogeneous behaviors and their main interdependencies on shaping segregation over time.

Racial/Ethnic Residential Segregation and the First Wave of SARS-CoV-2 Infection Rates: A Spatial Analysis of Four U.S. Cities

Previous research has linked racial/ethnic residential segregation to a number of poor health conditions, including infectious disease. Here, we examine how racial/ethnic residential segregation is related to the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2. We examine infection rates by zip code level segregation in four major cities across the U.S.: New York City, Chicago, Houston, and San Diego. We also include a number of area-level Census variables in order to analyze how other factors may help account for the infection rate. We find that both Black and Latino residential clustering are significantly and positively related to a higher SARS-CoV-2 infection rate across all four cities, and that this effect is strong even when accounting for a number of other social conditions and factors that are salient to the transmission of infectious disease. As a result, we argue that neighborhood-level racial/ethnic patterning may serve as an important structural mechanism for disparities in SARS-CoV-2 infection.

The Spatial Structure and Local Experience of Residential Segregation

This study examines the extent to which road connectivity and physical barriers—such as highways, railroad tracks, and waterways—structure spatial patterns of racial and ethnic residential segregation and shape how segregation is locally experienced by residents. Our focus is on physical barriers that are also social boundaries—features of the built environment that reduce physical connectivity and mark a social boundary between geographic areas. We measure residential segregation with attention to the proximity and road connectivity between locations, which allows us to identify areas where physical barriers mark a social boundary between geographic areas with different racial and ethnic compositions. Our approach integrates ethnographic observation of three such areas in Houston, Texas, to investigate residents' perceptions and local experience of social and spatial division. The results reveal that physical barriers are associated with heightened levels of ethnoracial segregation, and residents experience the barriers as symbolic markers of perceived distinctions between groups and physical impediments to social connection. Although barriers like highways, railroad tracks, and bayous are not inherently harbingers of ethnoracial segregation, our study demonstrates that physical barriers can provide the infrastructure for social boundaries and facilitate durable neighborhood racial divisions.

International Newcomers and their direct, indirect and cumulative effect on Ethnic Residential Segregation: A Dynamic Assessment

Previous studies show households' selective residential mobility as a principal cause of residential segregation. However, a less studied aspect of residential segregation has been how foreign newcomers affect those mobility patterns and consequently residential segregation trends. This paper extends previous investigations by evaluating the effects of newly arrived immigrants on ethnic residential segregation from a dynamic perspective. Unlike previous studies, this study analyzes newcomers' neighborhood choices together with their direct, indirect, and cumulative effects on segregation. Results show that immigrant settlements not only exacerbate residential segregation by landing in already segregated areas (direct effect) but by triggering segregating promoting movements in households living in destination neighborhoods (undirect effect). Both results contribute to producing a higher level of segregation compared with a situation where newcomers would have been randomly allocated across the residential areas (cumulative effect). These findings highlight the importance of reception strategies in host cities to palliate segregation levels and demonstrates its cumulative effects.