GAUGING ETHNIC AND SOCIAL INEQUALITY IN URBAN CONTEXTS: THE CASE OF BRESCIA, ITALY

This dissertation aims to improve our understanding of the link between migrant ethnicity, space and socio-economic inequality. In the last three decades, the migratory pressure in Europe has reached significant levels. The massive flux of different ethnic groups has created significant tensions in many countries, causing widespread political conflicts and is now eroding the credibility of traditional political institutions. Here, we focused on three main issues, i.e., the residential segregation of immigrants, the immigrant’s earnings at the neighbourhood level and the school choice of immigrant families. Our approach has been quantitative and has tried to combine and integrate certain social, economic and geographical factors. The core of our study has been a detailed analysis on a census-style database on the Italian city of Brescia, which permitted us to geolocalise households at a block level. The structure of the dissertation includes four main chapters followed by a conclusion chapter. First presents an extensive literature review that examined various socio-economic aspects of migrations. We first considered housing market discrimination, segregation theories, segregation measurement. Besides we introduced literature on labour market discrimination, social inequality and neighbourhood and network effects. Furthermore, we reviewed second generation problems, education inequality, social cohesion and assimilation theories. The second presents an empirical study on Brescia, one of the most relevant cities in Italy for the share of immigrants. While this context allowed us to reflect on complex forms of segregation in South Europe, we explored segregation in the city. We analysed segregation by aggregate ethnic groups to cover the whole city immigrant population. These aggregates are East Europeans, South Asians, Middle Easterns and North Africans, Sub Saharan Africans, Chinese, East and South East Asians and South Americans. Segregation is particularly strong for South Asians and Chinese communities. The third chapter examines neighbourhood effect on immigrants’ earnings. The chapter considers the economic and social nexus of segregation by estimating neighbourhood effects on immigrants’ earnings within an urban context. For doing this, we linked socio-economic and spatial-demographic characteristics of immigrants by following an “egohood” approach, which jointly considers socialisation and proximity effects. An egohood is an ego-centred circular neighbourhood of given dimension around individual residence. We found that immigrants in areas with high probability to meet co-ethnics had lower earnings; there was no effect for the probability to meet natives. The fourth examines ethnic differentials in school choices in primary school as a determinant of education inequality. Education inequality is crucial in countries receiving considerable levels of migrations. We hypothesised that households choose schools by homophily, i.e. they chose a school with a high percentage of co-ethnics. Furthermore, we hypothesised that and households prefer schools with a high share of high socio economics status-pupils while being constrained by geographical proximity. Households are sensitive to socio-economic status, ethnic composition and home-school distance. However, we also found that choices by second-generation immigrants, i.e., those who were born in Italy, had lower differences with natives, while born abroad children display different choices. The fifth presents conclusions, limitation and future developments of this dissertation. Finally, some chapters reproduce independent research articles. This implies that some repetitions are possible, especially when discussing previous research and presenting the study context.