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Abstract
Over the past two decades, many European countries have witnessed new immigration patterns related to the gradual expansion of the European Union (EU). While migration motives and labour market positions of EU migrants are well-understood, relatively little is known about their housing positions in the hosting countries. Using sequence analyses and logistic regression on longitudinal register data from Statistics Netherlands, this article examines housing trajectories of EU migrants from seven countries in the Netherlands, over an eight-year period (2012–2019). Our results show that, while housing trajectories vary substantially in terms of length of stay in the Netherlands and access to social housing, private renting and homeownership, sharing is at the centre for all migrant groups, both as a temporary and long-term solution. Moreover, we show that varying housing trajectories can partially be explained through contrasting demographic and socio-economic profiles. Yet, even after controlling for such factors as income, age, and household composition, some differences between country of origin persist.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the editor and anonymous referees for their valuable comments and constructive suggestions.
Disclosure statement
No conflict of interest has been declared by the authors.
Notes
1 Some notable exceptions are: Balampanidis, Citation2020; Finn & Mayock, Citation2022; Lombard, Citation2021; Smith, Citation2015).
2 We use the term ‘housing trajectories’ to describe the different stages which households progress in 2011-2019. We relate this to tenure position (social or private renting vs. owning) but also whether a household lives without another household at one address alone, and whether the migrant stays in or leaves the country. Similar to the contemporary conceptualization of the term ‘housing career’ (Arundel & Lennartz, Citation2020) and the alternative concept of a ‘housing pathway’ (Clapham, Citation2002) there is no predefined path towards a final stage, which in practice would often be assumed to be homeownership. Instead, these notions will be used interchangeably; however, for the sake of clarity we will use the notion of a ‘trajectory’ throughout the text.
3 This implies both return migration to the country of origin as well as migration to a third one.
4 So far, Statistics Netherlands only registers gender as a binary variable. We are thus bound to this classification.
5 During the period of observation, the United Kingdom was still an EU Member State, which is why we refer to it as an EU country rather than a former EU Member State.
6 Since access to social housing in the Netherlands is restricted by waiting lists and income limits, migrants who moved into rented social housing straight away must have moved in with a partner who was already living in social housing.
7 Up to 2015, Bulgarian immigration to the Netherlands was restricted to the self-employed and to employees with a work permit, despite the country’s EU membership. Some Bulgarian migrants worked here via informal networks or via Bulgarian recruitment agencies, which might explain the large number of unknown migration motives.
8 PRS = private rental sector
9 PRS = private rental sector; HO = homeownership
10 PRS = Private rental sector