IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/2512.17037.html

Immigrant Residential Segregation in Europe: A Comparative Study of Spatial Segregation Patterns in Urban Areas across 30 Countries

Author

Listed:
  • Tobias Ruttenauer
  • Kasimir Dederichs
  • David Kretschmer

Abstract

Immigrant residential segregation can profoundly shape access to opportunities, immigrant integration, and inter-group relations. Yet we lack systematic evidence on how segregation varies across Europe, and what structural factors are associated with these patterns. This study addresses the gap by focusing on two questions: (i) how does immigrant-native segregation vary across urban areas in Europe, and (ii) which urban area- and country-level characteristics are consistently linked to segregation? Using harmonised 1x1 km grid-level data from the 2021/22 census, we calculate spatially weighted Dissimilarity Indices for all 717 Functional Urban Areas (FUAs) across 30 European countries. We combine these measures with rich data on demographics, the economy, housing, immigrant populations, and policy. To identify robust correlates of segregation, we apply a Specification Curve Analysis across 16,164 regression models. Segregation is higher in Western and Northern Europe compared to most of Eastern and Southern Europe. Moreover, we show that segregation is heavily driven by macro-spatial dynamics between diverse urban cores and relatively homogeneous suburban areas. At the urban area level, segregation is systematically linked to the demographic composition and spatial distribution of the local population, economic conditions, housing market characteristics, as well as the composition of the immigrant population. At the national level, established immigrant destinations are more segregated, while migration and integration policies are not consistently linked to segregation. These findings offer the most comprehensive comparative assessment of immigrant segregation across Europe to date, revealing how structural conditions relate to spatial integration.

Suggested Citation

  • Tobias Ruttenauer & Kasimir Dederichs & David Kretschmer, 2025. "Immigrant Residential Segregation in Europe: A Comparative Study of Spatial Segregation Patterns in Urban Areas across 30 Countries," Papers 2512.17037, arXiv.org.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2512.17037
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.17037
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Seong-Yun Hong & David O'Sullivan & Yukio Sadahiro, 2014. "Implementing Spatial Segregation Measures in R," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(11), pages 1-18, November.
    2. Uri Simonsohn & Joseph P. Simmons & Leif D. Nelson, 2020. "Specification curve analysis," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 4(11), pages 1208-1214, November.
    3. van Buuren, Stef & Groothuis-Oudshoorn, Karin, 2011. "mice: Multivariate Imputation by Chained Equations in R," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 45(i03).
    4. Bart Sleutjes & Helga A. G. Valk & Jeroen Ooijevaar, 2018. "The Measurement of Ethnic Segregation in the Netherlands: Differences Between Administrative and Individualized Neighbourhoods," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 34(2), pages 195-224, May.
    5. Elizabeth Bruch & Joffre Swait, 2019. "Choice Set Formation in Residential Mobility and Its Implications for Segregation Dynamics," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 56(5), pages 1665-1692, October.
    6. Sean Reardon & Stephen Matthews & David O’Sullivan & Barrett Lee & Glenn Firebaugh & Chad Farrell & Kendra Bischoff, 2008. "The geographic scale of Metropolitan racial segregation," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 45(3), pages 489-514, August.
    7. Raj Chetty & Nathaniel Hendren & Lawrence F. Katz, 2016. "The Effects of Exposure to Better Neighborhoods on Children: New Evidence from the Moving to Opportunity Experiment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(4), pages 855-902, April.
    8. Trevon D. Logan & John M. Parman, 2025. "Racial Residential Segregation in the United States," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 63(3), pages 964-1010, September.
    9. John Logan & Richard Alba, 1993. "Locational returns to human capital: Minority access to suburban community resources," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 30(2), pages 243-268, May.
    10. Uri Simonsohn & Joseph P. Simmons & Leif D. Nelson, 2020. "Publisher Correction: Specification curve analysis," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 4(11), pages 1215-1215, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. repec:osf:osfxxx:sw6kd_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Eibich, Peter & Goldzahl, Léontine, 2021. "Does retirement affect secondary preventive care use? Evidence from breast cancer screening," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 43(C).
    3. Rose, Julian & Neubauer, Florian & Ankel-Peters, Jörg, 2024. "Long-Term Effects of the Targeting the Ultra-Poor Program - A Reproducibility and Replicability Assessment of Banerjee et al. (2021)," I4R Discussion Paper Series 142, The Institute for Replication (I4R).
    4. Rubin, Mark, 2023. "Type I error rates are not usually inflated," MetaArXiv 3kv2b, Center for Open Science.
    5. Clist, Paul, 2025. "The Common Problem of Bad Controls in Tests of the Linguistic Savings Hypothesis. A Comment on Ayres et al. (PNAS, 2023) and related literature," Journal of Comments and Replications in Economics (JCRE), ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 4, pages 1-27.
    6. Jemesa Landers & Tom Coupé & Andrea Menclova, 2026. "The Long-Term Impact of War Victimization on Life Satisfaction - Evidence from the Life in Transition Survey," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 182(1), pages 1-20, March.
    7. Rat für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsdaten RatSWD (ed.), 2023. "Erhebung und Nutzung unstrukturierter Daten in den Sozial-, Verhaltens- und Wirtschaftswissenschaften," RatSWD Output Series, German Data Forum (RatSWD), volume 7, number 7-2de.
    8. Haveresch, Nils & Ankel-Peters, Jörg & Bensch, Gunther, 2025. "A Slippery Slope: Topographic Variation as an Instrument," I4R Discussion Paper Series 278, The Institute for Replication (I4R).
    9. Dorison, Charles A & Lerner, Jennifer S & Heller, Blake H & Rothman, Alexander J & Kawachi, Ichiro I & Wang, Ke & Rees, Vaughan W & Gill, Brian P & Gibbs, Nancy & Ebersole, Charles R & Vally, Zahir & , 2022. "In COVID-19 health messaging, loss framing increases anxiety with little-to-no concomitant benefits : Experimental evidence from 84 countries," Other publications TiSEM 235f67b6-6be5-4061-8693-3, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    10. Gretton, Jeremy & Roemer, Tobias & Schlüter, Elmar, 2024. "Replication of Hamel & Wilcox-Archuleta (2022): "Black Workers in White Places: Daytime Racial Diversity and White Public Opinion"," I4R Discussion Paper Series 61, The Institute for Replication (I4R), revised 2024.
    11. Mitre-Becerril, David & MacDonald, John M., 2024. "Does urban development influence crime? Evidence from Philadelphia’s new zoning regulations," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 142(C).
    12. repec:osf:metaar:3kv2b_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Fieberg, Christian & Günther, Steffen & Poddig, Thorsten & Zaremba, Adam, 2024. "Non-standard errors in the cryptocurrency world," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 92(C).
    14. Helmers, Viola & van der Werf, Edwin, 2022. "Did the German Aviation Tax Affect Passenger Numbers? New Evidence Employing Difference-in-differences," VfS Annual Conference 2022 (Basel): Big Data in Economics 264118, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    15. Claire Duin & Philipp E. Sischka & Andreas Heinz & Helmut Willems, 2025. "The relationship between problematic social media use and health behavior: An exploratory specification curve analysis of large-scale survey data," Applied Research in Quality of Life, Springer;International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, vol. 20(1), pages 319-345, February.
    16. Tran, Nhan, 2024. "Parents' legal status and children's health insurance: Evidence from DACA," MPRA Paper 120173, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. Slichter, David & Tran, Nhan, 2023. "Do better journals publish better estimates?," MPRA Paper 118433, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    18. repec:osf:socarx:tjkcy_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Karsten Hansen & Kanishka Misra & Robert Evan Sanders, 2024. "Uninformed Choices in Perishables," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 43(4), pages 751-777, July.
    20. Bachler, Sebastian & Erhart, Andrea & Holzknecht, Armando, 2023. "Replication Report on Altmann et al. (2022)," I4R Discussion Paper Series 43, The Institute for Replication (I4R).
    21. W. Ben Mccartney & John Orellana‐Li & Calvin Zhang, 2024. "Political Polarization Affects Households' Financial Decisions: Evidence from Home Sales," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 79(2), pages 795-841, April.
    22. Nikolova, Milena & Cnossen, Femke & Nikolaev, Boris, 2024. "Robots, meaning, and self-determination," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 53(5).
    23. Cantone, Giulio Giacomo & Tomaselli, Venera, 2024. "On the Coherence of Composite Indexes: Multiversal Model and Specification Analysis for an Index of Well-Being," MetaArXiv d5y26, Center for Open Science.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2512.17037. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.