Minority Ethnic Segregation, Integration and Citizenship: A European Perspective

Abstract

Questions of minority ethnic settlement and integration have recently moved up the political and policy agenda across Europe. This paper re-examines the way in which minority ethnic housing segregation and integration are currently represented in political discourse across the European Union and reviews their implications for housing policy, inclusion and the social rights of citizenship. The paper draws on the RAXEN project reports of the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia to provide a comparative investigation of housing segregation and integration across the 15 member-states of the European Union prior to its enlargement in 2004. The paper concludes that political discourses on ethnic segregation tend to accentuate the pathological characteristics of ethnic clustering, and to privilege explanations based on ethnicity and cultural difference at the expense of racialised inequalities in power and status. Such discourses are founded on a limited understanding of the link between ethnic segregation and integration.

Keywords:

• Housing
• Integration
• Segregation
• Europe
• Citizenship

Acknowledgements

This paper draws on the report of Harrison, Law and Phillips (2005) for the EUMC and on fieldwork undertaken for a series of projects in Bradford between 1999 and 2003. Special thanks go to Malcolm Harrison for his support in the field and his intellectual engagement in the interpretation of the results. Thanks also to Alan Murie for his constructive comments on this paper.

Notes

1. The EUMC (now the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights) was established in 2000 to monitor racism, xenophobia and anti-Semitism in the European Union member-states. National focal points in each member-state are commissioned to produce information and research on race equality policies, legislation and practice. Housing reports have been available for the 15 member-states since 2003, and can be viewed through their online database (http://fra.europa.eu/fra/index.php).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Deborah Phillips

Deborah Phillips is Senior Lecturer in Geography at the University of Leeds