Constructing an urban discourse on immigration in Southern European cities. Looking at urban and housing regimes as structural mechanisms of ethnic residential marginalisation

Abstract

Cities can be devices for integration as much as for exclusion. In Southern European cities, housing and residential marginalisation represents the most critical and controversial of urban conditions for the settlement and inclusion of immigrants. Yet these issues are conspicuously under-researched in both the international comparative and Southern European literature. The complexity of ethnic housing hardship and segregation are often misleadingly attributed solely to market mechanisms or intractable polarisation dynamics. However, the construction of an urban discourse on immigration requires a clear understanding of the current urban and residential insertion of the large variety of immigrant. Drawing on a comparative analysis of eight Mediterranean cities, this paper reviews the distinctive features of ethnic residential segregation within wider societal and urban contexts, with special focus on the role of housing systems and urban processes of ethnic and social differentiation. Problematics and driving causes are reconceptualised. It is demonstrated that low levels of ethnic spatial segregation conceal a real problem of social residential marginalization. This paradox predominantly originates from wider mechanisms of differentiation rooted in the macro-scale welfare regime arrangements and dualist housing systems. It is additionally reinforced by current urban renewal strategies.