Exploring a decade of small area ethnic (de-)segregation in England and Wales

Claims of the self-segregation of minority ethnic groups during the early 2000s were much critiqued in the British academic literature, which pointed instead to decreasing ethnic segregation via the rather benign demographic processes of births and deaths, and internal migration from urban clusters. Despite the attention that these opposing debates received, a detailed study of change in ethnic residential segregation during the period has yet to be undertaken for the whole of England and Wales, and the recent release of 2011 Census data has now made this possible. This paper contributes to the literature by providing a systematic overview of national-level change in residential segregation in a changing socio-political climate, considering how minority ethnic distributions have altered in the last decade. The paper explores the specific case of England and Wales, but in doing so makes a contribution to our understanding of the contemporary evolution of ethnic geographies and the dynamics of diverse places, beyond this specific region. Using a commonly employed measure of spatial unevenness, the Index of Dissimilarity, at the smallest possible geographical level, the findings demonstrate how there has been increased residential mixing between each ethnic group (the White British majority and all minority groups), and that urban locales have experienced a decrease in segregation between 2001 and 2011. The findings disturb the association of ethnic diversity with ethnic divisions in (particularly urban) space and provide support for the somewhat ‘every day’ processes of de-segregation, rather than a cause for concern over increasingly entrenched neighbourhoods. </jats:p

Unpacking summary measures of ethnic residential segregation using an age group and age cohort perspective

Funding: UK Economic and Social Research Council (ES/K007394/1)The residential segregation literature has underplayed the significance of age in shaping the ethnic compositions of neighbourhoods. This paper develops an age group and age cohort perspective as a way to unpack summary measures of residential segregation. Harmonised small area data for England and Wales (2001–2011) are used as a case study to explore the potential of this methodology for understanding better the role of age in the evolution of ethnic residential geographies. Our findings demonstrate the age-specificity of residential segregation, for both cross-sectional patterns and change over time. Levels of segregation vary among age groups and age cohorts and between ethnic groups, with a changing pattern of segregation as people age. Exploring change over a 10-year period, we observe that residential segregation decreases during young adulthood for all age cohorts, then increases during the late 20s and early 30s, and continues to increase until retirement. These trends are, for the most, consistent between ethnic groups. Our findings emphasise how residential segregation is a dynamic process with a significant life cycle component, with commonalities in residential decision-making between ethnic groups through the life course.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Public entrepreneurship and the politics of regeneration in multi-Level governance

The paper uses a case study of urban regeneration policy in Sheffield, UK, to explore local public entrepreneurship in a system of multi-level governance. Recent analyses of public entrepreneurs have directed attention to the macro-political structural and institutional conditions that enable and constrain these actors, and to their individual characteristics and attributes. The stress has been on the national level and on individual action at the expense of the agency of local networks of entrepreneurs. In order to address this lacuna, we consider how local policy entrepreneurs work across governance levels and develop ideas, institutional structures and support in pursuit of their goals, using Kingdon’s notion of policy streams as a vehicle for our analysis. We highlight the contingent and path dependent nature of such entrepreneurship. In particular, we identify the temporal sequencing of agenda shifts and entrepreneurial actions as a crucial aspect of the policy process

The Changing Geographies of Ethnic Diversity in England and Wales, 1991-2011

While ethnic diversity is traditionally an urban characteristic, new spaces of diversity are emerging. This challenges our current understandings of the geographies of ethnic diversity and forces us to consider the more intricate spatial patterns and processes of ethnic group population change. Ethnic diversity, now a key feature of contemporary society in Britain, is an issue of public, policy, political, and academic interest; the 2011 Census provided an opportunity to update our knowledge of how diversity has grown, and in what ways. This paper explores the new geographies of ethnic diversity in England and Wales, mapping the evolving landscape of diversity over two decades. The paper makes use of measures of diversity and clustering for small areas (wards) for consistent geographies for 1991–2011, and for the most recent decade using a district level urban–rural area classification. There is evidence of a spreading out of ethnic diversity from urban centres towards areas traditionally less diverse. Spatial mixing has increased – the period also saw a growth of minority ethnic groups in areas outside own‐group clusters. The increased share of all ethnic groups (White British and minority) in less urban areas challenges claims of ‘White flight’ from diversity. Increased ethnic diversity is clearly an important feature of contemporary population change, and the coming years are likely to see continued mixing between people and within places – and in new locales. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

The complex geographies of ethnic residential segregation: Using spatial and local measures to explore scale-dependency and spatial relationships

Ethnic residential geographies have become increasingly spatially complex. While urban diversity is by far the dominant pattern in the UK , over the last two decades suburban and rural areas have experienced a modest but steady growth of ethnic minority populations. Yet despite these emerging patterns, a bias persists whereby most studies of ethnic residential segregation are concerned solely with metropolitan places. While spatial and local measures enable a more sophisticated analysis of the intricate geographical and scalar variations in residential segregation than traditional “global” approaches, there have been surprisingly few analyses of the local dimensions of ethnic residential patterning, and these have tended to be metro‐focused. This study analyses small area ethnic segregation in England and Wales using a spatially‐weighted approach for 2011 Census data across all (small) areas, rather than just cities. To briefly summarise, the results demonstrate (1) the non‐uniform scale effects of segregation between each ethnic group; (2) spatial “thresholds” at which segregation can be found, which challenge established wisdom about the relative levels of segregation between ethnic groups; (3) the high spatial variability in segregation levels; and (4) how segregation dimensions and group proportions are not strongly related in all neighbourhoods, providing justification for their use in conjunction. Exploring segregation across a national context, the research develops understandings of ethnic group interactions between spaces and across scales, and advances hitherto underdeveloped debates about the complexity of the conceptual and empirical distinctions that can be made between the dimensions of segregation