When new immigrants arrive to Denmark they would like to live close to family and friends. This gives safety. Consequently they move into social housing projects, often in areas characterised by a large degree of immigrant inhabitants.

In the past 25 years, in nearly all North European countries there has been a tendency to growth in the numbers of immigrants and refugees and a tendency to that these ethnic minorities settle down in certain parts of town – mainly in the social housings. Thus, a number of housing areas have arisen with a small proportion of inhabitants from a particular country and a large number of immigrant countries - so called 'multi ethnic housing areas'.

In addition, a previous register analysis (Skifter Andersen 2006) showed that it often is unemployed and less favoured ethnic minorities that move into social housings and multi ethnic housing areas. The relocation of ethnic minorities to social housings and multi ethnic housing areas neither could be explained by differences in relation to the rest of the population (such as family conditions, employment, income etc.). For that reason there must be other explanations to the choice of housing which this report is examining.

The study is based on around 1000 telephone interviews among randomly chosen households with ethnic minorities from the 10 most important immigrant countries who have moved during 2004. The questions were divided into themes about the household's background and integration in the Danish society, their ideal preferences concerning housing, area and location, causes of moving away from previous housing and specific reasons for moving to the new housing.

There are three main explanations to the special settlement patterns of the ethnic minorities. First, they are generally an economic weak group with low incomes and many persons outside the labour market. At the same time a large part of the households are families with children who have housing needs that are hard to fulfil i.e. through private renting. For this reason, social housing is an obvious choice.

Second, there are indications that they have a hard time finding housing in other parts of the housing market. A reason for this could be that access to tenements and shared owners flats often is contingent upon personal relations and networks, which ethnic minorities have to a less extent than others. The study shows that ethnic minorities more seldom than others use personal networks to obtain housing.

Third, for different reasons ethnic minorities have special settling preferences. The study clearly confirms that settlement close to friends and family - and to a certain extent compatriots – is an important motive in the choice of settlement for ethnic minorities. There is not anything that suggests that they have especially deviant wishes concerning the design of the house or the area. I.e. they have the same ideal preferences of living in a residential property and in a house with a garden as the rest of the population – a type of housing which only to a small degree can be found in social housings.

Danish Building Research Institute
Denmark
Hans Skifter Andersen, tel. 0045 45 74 22 95

21/02/2008

21/02/2008

Hans Skifter Andersen

research

Urban Policy

Social inclusion & integration