The segregation of generations: ancestral groups in Sydney, 2011

Most models of immigrant minority enclave formation in cities represent their situation as relatively transient elements in urban residential mosaics. As minority group members become both economically integrated and socially–culturally assimilated into the host society, so they move away from the enclaves where they initially concentrated. Such shifts are especially likely in the second and later generations of group members, who are more likely to overcome the disadvantages experienced by many of the original settlers with regard to human capital. This paper evaluates that model using data on the residential distributions of three generations of those claiming one of 19 different ancestral groups in Sydney in 2011, at four nested spatial scales, deploying a recently developed inferential method for evaluating the intensity of residential segregation. The findings are not consistent with the model: in general, members of the second and third generations in any ancestral group are as segregated as the first generation (that is, those born outside Australia) at both regional and neighbourhood scales.