Understanding partnership, employment and housing patterns of immigrants and their descendants in England and Wales through ethnic concentration

Parth Pandya , University of St Andrews
Hill Kulu, University of St Andrews
Julia Mikolai, University of St Andrews
Chia Liu, University of St. Andrews

Partnership, employment, and housing are all affected by proximity and spatial contexts hence analysing ethnic concentration is key in further contextualising the life domains. This study highlights the importance of linking spatial processes to demographic processes which emphasises the novelty of our study. The segmented assimilation theory posits that there are persisting differences by ethnic group, migrant origin, and migrant generation. We explore these differences in England and Wales using the Census 2011 microdata (N~ 2.6 million). We distinguish between immigrants and their descendants, not just ethnic groups and contribute to existing assimilation literature by analysing ethnic density in local authorities. We employ multinomial logistic regressions. Generational differences in marriage, being in managerial and routine occupations, and homeownership and renting privately are large. We find large heterogeneity when analysing ethnic density for example for non-native White, Chinese, Black African, and Black Caribbean ethnic groups, the more ethnically dense a local authority is, the more likely that an individual is never married. For managerial occupations, the denser the local authority is, the less likely a South Asian and a Black African individual is to hold a managerial occupation. The reverse of this trend is true for non-native White and Chinese individuals. Finally, in housing, for Indians and Pakistanis, the higher the ethnic density, the more likely they are to be a homeowner. The reverse is observed for Bangladeshi and Chinese individuals. For all Asian groups, the ethnic density differences are the largest which may reflect relative socio-economic stability or area characteristics.

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 Presented in Session 91. Marriage and Unions of Migrant Populations