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Abstract
The paper investigates ethnic minority concentration within social housing and the potentials of a strong social housing sector through an analysis of the housing careers of Somalis and Turks in Copenhagen. In a Danish context, the two ethnic groups differ greatly with respect to migration history, socio-economic resources and family characteristics as well as distribution between tenures. It is therefore interesting to study whether these differences lead to differences in housing market choices and constraints. The majority of the interviewed Somalis and Turks made their housing careers within the social housing sector, which to the interviewees offered good housing options and possibilities for shaping their own housing careers. The majority of the Somalis perceived paying interest as being incompatible with Islam. Renting thus allowed them to adhere to their religious beliefs. The advantages of the social housing sector limited the pull of owner-occupied housing. The paper thus questions the use of the home-ownership gap as an indication of a lack of ethnic minority integration.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Anders Høst, Emma Holmqvist, Susanne Søholt and Hans Skifter Andersen for comments on previous versions of this paper.
Notes
1. Here, the Copenhagen housing market is defined loosely as the Copenhagen metropolitan area.
2. While the oldest public estates in Copenhagen are from the early part of the 20th century, a large part of the stock was built during the 1950s and 1960s. The stock is of a relatively high standard as the older estates have been and still are subject to renovation. Thus, deprived public housing areas in a Danish context primarily relates to the social composition of the residents in the areas and not to the physical conditions of the building stock.
3. By way of example, the highest level of allowance for people who are not disabled or pensioners is currently approx. EUR 450 monthly for a family of two adults and two children with a minimum self-payment of just below EUR 260.
4. If nothing else is noted, all statistics are from 2013 to correspond with the conduction of the interviews.
5. Meaning that they themselves, their parents or their grandparents were born in Turkey or Somalia, respectively.
6. In 2009, the employment rate of Somalis was 39% while it was 57% for Turks.
7. The source of the figures is a database of data from Danish registers 1985–2008. The figures are my own calculations of tenure distribution in Copenhagen in 2008 and cover all immigrants and descendants of Somali/Turkish origin and all Danes, aged 16 and above.
8. Thus, the focus on housing careers does not entail an analysis of the sequences of housing situations that make up the housing careers of the interviewed Turks and Somalis.
9. Turkish refugees and Somali work migrants were not included in the study.
10. In a study by Skifter Andersen (Citation2006), 7% of the interviewed immigrants said that they had tried in vain to get private rental housing; the fairly low share supports the notion that the vast majority of ethnic minorities do not orient themselves towards the private rental sector and thus do not experience the potential discrimination by landlords.