Ethnic closure and immigrant residential segregation in Spanish working-class neighbourhoods

Abstract

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Given the difficulties of integration of the immigrant population and the demographic importance that this population is set to have in European society, this research uses an initial territorial approach and a subsequent qualitative analysis to study the internal residential dynamics of immigrants in five Spanish working-class neighbourhoods with a significant presence of foreign-born people. The analysis focuses on the role that ethnic prejudice and other factors, such as social class, play in the processes of initiation and maintenance of residential segregation of the immigrant population. Our results show a residential division characterised by advantages for the native population and, especially, by the acceptance of inequality by the immigrant population, which may be contributing to the fact that levels of ethnic prejudice from the native population are, so far, not very high in these neighbourhoods.