Ethnic residential segregation: A matter of ethnic minority household characteristics?

Despite the importance of household characteristics for residential mobility, these characteristics are seldom considered in research on ethnic residential segregation. This study seeks to fill this gap when focusing on the residential behaviour of ethnic minorities and the constraints they face on the housing market. We use conditional logit modelling to analyse the Belgian Census 2011 in order to investigate the relationship between, on the one hand, the presence of children and marital status and, on the other hand, living in neighbourhoods with many coethnics in Brussels and Antwerp, focusing on households formed by young adults of Moroccan descent. We find no association for the presence of children but find clear differences based on marital status. Unmarried couples are less likely than married couples to live in neighbourhoods with many coethnics. Moreover, there appear to be gender differences: Female-headed single-person households are less likely than married couples to live in neighbourhoods with many coethnics, whereas male-headed single-person households are more likely to do so. On the basis of these results, we conclude that the existing ethnic residential segregation theories that focus on ethnic minorities should take household characteristics into account.