Immigration, segregation and neighborhood change in Berlin: Fid-Bau Portal

Immigration, segregation and neighborhood change in Berlin

Marcińczak, Szymon / Bernt, Matthias

Abstract Even though the issue of immigrant-native segregation in Europe has been continuously researched for the last thirty years the attempts to illuminate the changing levels of ethnic segregation in the European city in the 21st century leave the case of Germany largely unexplored. The aim of this paper is to shed light on the evolving patterns of segregation and neighborhood change in Berlin in the 2010s (2007-2016). The traditional indices of segregation and the neighborhood typology are used to assess changes in the levels of segregation and patterns of residential intermixing, respectively. We also employ the sequence analysis method to investigate full trajectories of neighborhood change, and a regression tree for the sequences of neighborhood transitions is used to evaluate the effect of urban structure on ethnic neighborhood change. Despite considerable immigration, in total, immigrant-native segregation in Berlin declined over the last decade. Three decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, along with the selective spatial effects of international immigration, the spatial division of Berlin into the inner- and outer-city appears to be a decisive factor in the evolution of the local patterns of immigrant-native residential intermixing.

Highlights • We use segregation indices to assess segregation between hosts and immigrant groups. • We use a typology of tracts to analyze the patterns of ethnic neighborhood change. • Sequence analysis is used to examine pathways of ethnic neighborhood change. • Massive immigration into Berlin did not result in higher immigrant-native segregation. • Increasing residential intermixing of the hosts and immigrants is the main trend.