Paradoxes of Segregation: Housing Systems, Welfare Regimes and Ethnic Residential Change in Southern European Cities

Through an international comparative research, this unique book examines ethnic residential segregation patterns in relation to the wider society and mechanisms of social division of space in Western European regions, with a focus on eight Southern European cities. The book challenges reductive notions of segregation that dominate theory and policy, and re–centres the segregation debate on the causes of marginalisation and inequality, and the role of the state in these processes.

Paradoxes of Segregation offers a pioneering analysis of which and how systemic mechanisms, contextual conditions, processes and changes drive patterns of ethnic segregation and forms of socio–ethnic differentiation. It develops an innovative inter–disciplinary approach, including a new interpretative framework to explore ethnic patterns in relation to European welfare regimes, housing systems, immigration waves, and labour systems, and the socio–urban structure of the city and their changes. Additionally, it develops a new metaphor—“urban diaspora”—which captures processes of segregation found in these cities that challenges the traditional views of the ghetto with important implications for urban theories and urban policies.

Sonia Arbaci is Senior Lecturer at the Bartlett School of Planning, University College London, UK. Her research draws on European comparative studies and focuses on ethnic residential segregation and the role of welfare/housing systems and urban policies in the production of urban inequality. She has published extensively in journals including International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Housing Studies, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, and European Urban and Regional Studies.