Szymon Marcińczak

Where the grass is greener: social segregation in three major Polish cities at the beginning of the 21st century

In Europe a range of segregation studies can be found in the North, West and South, but hardly any in Central Eastern Europe – a region where the major economic and political changes induced by the demise of socialism in 1989 contributed to new social divisions and related spatial patterns. However, these changes have not been uniform and have resulted in context-specific outcomes. Relying on data on the socio-occupational structure of the population from the National Census 2002 at the census tract scale, this article explores the levels and patterns of social segregation in three major Polish cities: Łódź, Cracow and Warsaw, urban areas that reflect divergent paths of more and less successful post-socialist transformations. This contribution concludes that, more than a decade after the demise of socialism, census tracts still generally contained populations that were heterogeneous with regard to socio-occupational status and that socioeconomic transformations in Poland and the social toll these processes involved have not yet been fully translated into intra-urban spaces.

PARADOXES OF (POST)SOCIALIST SEGREGATION: METROPOLITAN SOCIOSPATIAL DIVISIONS UNDER SOCIALISM AND AFTER IN POLAND

The state of the art in research on residential segregation and concentration in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) largely focuses on process description (e.g., the multitude of works on gentrification and suburbanization). Even though major advances in the conceptualization and measurement of segregation have been made, works that scrutinize the patterns of segregation and/or concentration in CEE are rare, while studies that simultaneously explore and link segregation patterns under socialism and after are virtually nonexistent. Relying on Polish census-tract level data on the educational structure of population in 1978, 1988, and 2002, this study explores the patterns of social segregation and concentration in the three major Polish cities (Warsaw, Cracow, and Łódź), representing different paths of development under socialism and after. The results show that the population of the three major Polish cities was still socially heterogeneous at the census tract level in 2002. The results also reveal that the level of social residential segregation in the three cities has been decreasing steadily since 1978, irrespective of the prevailing economic system. [Key words: Residential segregation, concentration, socialist city, post-socialist city, Poland.]

Socio-economic segregation in European capital cities: East meets West

Segregation based on income differences is central to this chapter. We aim to understand the most recent (2004-2011) socio-economic segregation process in (metropolitan) Amsterdam, while connecting it to the changing Dutch welfare regime, which from around 1990 is moving into a liberal direction. The social rented sector and the ‘regulated’ parts of the private sector are under pressure, while owner-occupancy is growing. Social housing is increasingly catering for just those who have a very low income. Since housing is not spatially distributed in an even way, this affects the level of socio-economic segregation.Growing inequalities in Europe are a major challenge threatening the sustainability of urban communities and the competiveness of European cities. While the levels of socio-economic segregation in European cities are still modest compared to some parts of the world, the poor are increasingly concentrating spatially within capital cities across Europe. An overlooked area of research, this book offers a systematic and representative account of the spatial dimension of rising inequalities in Europe. This book provides rigorous comparative evidence on socio-economic segregation from 13 European cities. Cities include Amsterdam, Athens, Budapest, London, Milan, Madrid, Oslo, Prague, Riga, Stockholm, Tallinn, Vienna and Vilnius. Comparing 2001 and 2011, this multi-factor approach links segregation to four underlying universal structural factors: social inequalities, global city status, welfare regimes and housing systems. Hypothetical segregation levels derived from those factors are compared to actual segregation levels in all cities. Each chapter provides an in-depth and context sensitive discussion of the unique features shaping inequalities and segregation in the case study cities. The main conclusion of the book is that the spatial gap between the poor and the rich is widening in capital cities across Europe, which threatens to harm the social stability of European cities. This book will be a key reference on increasing segregation and will provide valuable insights to students, researchers and policy makers who are interested in the spatial dimension of social inequality in European cities.

Urban Geographies of Hesitant Transition: Tracing Socioeconomic Segregation in Post-Ceauşescu Bucharest

Scholars have raised concerns about the social costs of the transition from state socialism to capitalism in Central and Eastern Europe, and geographers are particularly interested in the spatial expressions and implications of these costs, including apparently increasing residential segregation. Applying a range of segregation measures to 1992 and 2002 census data, this contribution studies socio-occupational residential segregation in Bucharest. The conclusion is that Bucharest was relatively socio-spatially mixed at both times; in fact, a modest, yet fully legible, decreasing overall trend is observable. This is at odds with many popular assumptions of the past 20 years.

Factors Shaping Workplace Segregation Between Natives and Immigrants

Research on segregation of immigrant groups is increasingly turning its attention from residential areas toward other important places, such as the workplace, where immigrants can meet and interact with members of the native population. This article examines workplace segregation of immigrants. We use longitudinal, georeferenced Swedish population register data, which enables us to observe all immigrants in Sweden for the period 1990–2005 on an annual basis. We compare estimates from ordinary least squares with fixed-effects regressions to quantify the extent of immigrants’ self-selection into specific workplaces, neighborhoods, and partnerships, which may bias more naïve ordinary least squares results. In line with previous research, we find lower levels of workplace segregation than residential segregation. The main finding is that low levels of residential segregation reduce workplace segregation, even after we take into account intermarriage with natives as well as unobserved characteristics of immigrants’ such as willingness and ability to integrate into the host society. Being intermarried with a native reduces workplace segregation for immigrant men but not for immigrant women.

Patterns of Socioeconomic Segregation in the Capital Cities of Fast-Track Reforming Postsocialist Countries

Socioeconomic disparities have been rising on both sides of the Atlantic for the last forty years. This study illuminates the relationship among economic inequality, other contextual and institutional factors, and socioeconomic intraurban segregation in Eastern Europe. We draw our empirical evidence from the capital cities of so-called fast-track reforming postsocialist countries: Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, and the Czech Republic. The analysis consists of two stages. First, we use the traditional indexes of segregation to assess the global levels of socioeconomic segregation in the case cities. Second, we investigate the global patterns and local geographies of socioeconomic residential intermixing and introduce a typology of neighborhoods based on the socio-occupational composition of their residential tracts. Despite rapidly growing income inequality, the levels of socioeconomic segregation in the postsocialist city are either low or very low. The scale of segregation differs between the cities and the patterns of residential intermixing in the large cities of central and Eastern Europe are fundamentally different from those found in the Baltic states. The results lead to two important conclusions. One is that the link between socioeconomic distance and spatial distance in postsocialist cities is moderately sensitive to the level of economic inequality and to other contributory factors. The other key finding is that inertia effects have offset the immediate catalyzing effect of economic liberalization, globalization, and growing socioeconomic inequality on the patterns of segregation, at least in the first decade after the collapse of socialism.

Socio-Economic Segregation in European Capital Cities: Increasing Separation between Poor and Rich

ABSTRACT Socioeconomic inequality is on the rise in major European cities, as are concerns over it, since it is seen as a threat to social cohesion and stability. Surprisingly, relatively little is known about the spatial dimensions of rising socioeconomic inequality. This paper builds on a study of socioeconomic segregation in 12 European cities: Amsterdam, Athens, Budapest, London, Madrid, Oslo, Prague, Riga, Stockholm, Tallinn, Vienna, and Vilnius. Data used derive from national censuses and registers for 2001 and 2011. The main conclusion is that socioeconomic segregation has increased. This paper develops a rigorous multifactor approach to understand segregation and links it to four underlying, partially overlapping, structural factors: social inequalities, globalization and economic restructuring, welfare regimes, and housing systems. Taking into account contextual factors resulted in a better understanding of actual segregation levels, while introducing time lags between structural factors and segregation outcomes will likely further improve the theoretical model.

No more work for Stakhanov: migrants and stayers in the depopulating Donbas, Ukraine

Labor migration from the less to the more affluent cities and regions is a defining trait of the patterns of population redistribution in Central and Eastern Europe, especially in the former Soviet Union, where international disparities in income and living standards are particularly manifest. While these macro-trends are well portrayed in the literature, their outcome at the household level seldom figures in the literature. In Ukraine, labor out-migration to Russia is a frequently chosen strategy, not least because of the Russophone background of eastern Ukraine and of many of the major cities, including Kiev and Odessa. This out-migration contributes to urban decline. Using multivariate methods, we analyze the characteristics of population subgroups with and without the experience of working abroad. We also use descriptive statistics to assess the impact of migration events within households on the standard of living of the latter. Our data source is the city of Stakhanov Health Interview Survey 2009 (n = 3,000).

Changing patterns of residential and workplace segregation in the Stockholm metropolitan area

Immigrant–native segregation is present in the spaces in which individuals from different ethnic/racial groups practice their everyday lives; interact with others and develop their ethnic, social and spatial networks. The overwhelming majority of academic research on immigrant segregation has focused on the residential domain, thus largely overlooking other arenas of daily interaction. The present study contributes to the emerging literature on immigrant residential and workplace segregation by examining changes in patterns of residential and workplace segregation over time. We draw our data from the Stockholm metropolitan region, Sweden’s main port of entry for immigrants. The results suggest a close association between residential and workplace segregation. Immigrant groups that are more segregated at home are also more segregated in workplace neighborhoods. More importantly, we found that a changing segregation level in one domain tends to involve a similar trend in the other domain.