The report presents an overview of the information found in the national reports on housing, discrimination and racism, that the 15 EU Member States (MSs) delivered to the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) in 2003 and 2004.

Overall, ethnic minorities are living in comparatively poor housing conditions which contribute to entrenched patterns of social and economic inequality. They are also subject to persistent, extensive and varied forms of ethnic, racist and national discrimination. There are substantial differences in housing conditions, tenure patterns, and the extent of discrimination and hostility experienced across and between migrant and minority ethnic groups. Nonetheless, housing disadvantage is widespread, and often severe. The negative housing outcomes for disadvantaged minorities result from socio-economic and racist exclusion, but at the same time contribute substantially to it.

The idea of ‘integration’ can become heavily politicised, and there is a danger that ‘population mixing’ in neighbourhoods can be interpreted by policy-makers as a short-cut through which minorities could be controlled and led to assimilate to a supposedly single, universal mainstream culture and politics. The report can find little solid evidence that could justify seeing involuntary spatial mixing as an appropriate route towards social integration.

The evidence reveals a paradox. On the one hand, Member States are strengthening anti-discrimination legislation, with some introducing special programmes to improve the housing conditions of migrants and minorities. On the other hand the report documents instances of resistance, hostility and failure by public authorities to address the deprivation and discrimination experienced by migrants and minorities in the housing arena.

The final chapters present an overview of potential methods and approaches to good practice at national, city and neighbourhood level and recommendations for further research and the way this research should be conducted.

The housing conditions of immigrants and minorities is a potentially important field for policy-makers in many parts of Europe, and its significance has been heightened as concerns about migration and integration have moved up the policy agenda in many countries.

Moreover, during the year that this report was written, the issue of the poor housing conditions of immigrants and minorities in Europe, and the role of racism in housing access, was thrust into public attention. Three separate fires occurred in overcrowded sub-standard buildings in Paris, one in April and two in August. These fires killed a total of 48 people and injured many more.

In 2005, a team from the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom was commissioned by the EUMC to undertake a comparative investigation of housing, discrimination and racism across the EU-15. The study was directed by the EUMC and drew upon materials available in thirty reports that had been commissioned previously from the EUMC’s RAXEN National Focal Points for individual countries.

The Information Network on Racism and Xenophobia (RAXEN) is the core of the EUMC’s activities. The network was set up in 2000 to provide information on racism, xenophobia and anti-semitism in the EU Member States, and in each state a National Focal Point (NFP) was established to produce information and research on national policy, legislation, and practice surrounding racial equality issues.

The present report presents the findings of the comparative study, and is based on the 2003 national housing reports, supplemented by information on housing from the more general country reports of 2004.

In 1997 the EU Council of Ministers decided to install an European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) "to provide the Community and its Member States (…) with objective, reliable and comparable information and data at European level on racism, xenophobia and anti-Semitism in order to help them when they take measures or formulate courses of actions within the spheres of competence". The EUMC is active since 1998.

On the basis of the data collected, the EUMC studies the extent and development of the phenomena and manifestations of racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and related intolerance. The EUMC analyses their causes, consequences and effects. It is also the task of the EUMC to work out strategies to combat racism and to highlight examples of good practice regarding the integration of migrants and ethnic and religious minority groups in the EU Member States.

The report outlines the following general conclusions in the final chapter:

University of Leeds
Malcolm Harrison (Professor of Housing and Social Policy), tel. +44 113 3434430

11/01/2006

Malcolm Harrison et al., University of Leeds

research

Urban Policy > Social inclusion & integration

Equality, Integration of social groups