White Flight & Social Segregation

GSSG Seminar

This seminar is jointly funded by the Royal Statistics Society, AQMEN/Glasgow Social Statistics Group and the School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Glasgow

Date: 25th June

Time: 2pm to 4pm

Venue: Room 916, Adam Smith Building, University of Glasgow

14.00 Speaker #1: Dr Richard Harris (University of Bristol)

"Motion Charts, White Flight and Ethnic Cliffs? Ethno-demographic change in the 2011 Census"

Discussant: Prof Gwilym Pryce

15.15 Speaker #2: Prof Gwilym Pryce (University of Glasgow)

“Future Directions in Segregation Research: An Overview of a Major New Research Programme”

Discussant: Dr Richard Harris

16.00 Close

Synopsis of Presentation #1: “Motion Charts, White Flight and Ethnic Cliffs? Ethno-demographic change in the 2011 Census” by Dr Richard Harris

The aim of this presentation is to investigate claims of decreased segregation yet also of ‘white flight’ from English cities during the period from 2001 to 2011. It does so supplementing a traditional measure of segregation, the dissimilarity index, with measures comparing differences between adjoining small areas. Together these measures provide insight not only into the amount of segregation but also its spatial configuration within local authorities, including the degree to which different ethnic groups are clustered together of dispersed across the authorities. An analysis of change is then undertaken, asking whether the neighbouring small areas with greatest differences in their ethnic compositions in 2001 become more or less dissimilar by 2011, and whether those changes are caused by more population mixing or by the withdrawal of the White British population from those areas. Motion charts also are presented to warning against over-simplification and ‘one-size-fits-all’ explanations, stressing the individual trajectories of different local authorities.

Synopsis of Presentation #2: “Future Directions in Segregation Research: An Overview of a Major New Research Programme” by Prof Gwilym Pryce

The aim of this presentation is to provide an overview of future directions in segregation research, with particular focus on a major new research initiative funded as part of the new ESRC AQMEN Research Centre. The presentation will outline potential ways to improve and enrich the measurement of social segregation and to deepen our understanding of the causes and consequences. In particular, the project will seek to apply to cutting-edge longitudinal and sorting-model techniques to explore the drivers of, and constraints on, household location choice (the causes of neighbourhood segregation, sorting and inequality), the effect on life chances and wellbeing (the consequences) and the implications for how we design interventions (development of policy simulation toolkits). These four elements (measurement, causes, consequences and simulation) make-up the four sequential, interconnected phases of the Urban Segregation and Inequality Research Project (USIRP).