Residential integration : towards a sending country perspective

Abstract

This chapter explores the key issues relating to how housing integration might be understood and further researched from a 'country of origin' perspective. Residential integration is a key and perhaps even foundational dimension of the integration of migrants and minorities. Residential integration includes two key elements: the nature and quality of the housing that minorities occupy, assessed in terms of factors such as tenure, overcrowding and disrepair; and the patterns of migrant residence in receiving societies, including clustering or its absence. Residential integration in the second sense is usually seen as opposite to residential segregation, although, as we shall see below, segregation itself is defined in multiple ways, in terms of uneven distribution of settlement and low chances of inter-ethnic contact, as well as concentration, centralization and clustering. 'Clustering' itself is a more neutral term, referring to the propensity of specific groups to live together, rather than to their separation from other groups.