Segregation and residential mobility: Spatially entrapped social mobility and its impact on segregation in Athens

Segregation patterns and trends are traditionally considered to be changing through residential mobility, while scant attention is paid to the social mobility of long-term residents. This paper explores first the origins of this unilateral attention and ultimately relates it to the context in which mobility, and residential mobility in particular, were conceptualized by the founders of Urban Sociology. The rest of the paper is an attempt to substantiate the context dependency of this relation through the examination of the social mobility of long-term residents and its impact on shaping local social profiles in Athens. The Athenian context, bearing important similarities to those of other large cities in Southern Europe and elsewhere, has been characterized both by comparatively reduced residential mobility and by increased social mobility in the process of rapid postwar urbanization and the massive conversion of rural masses to urban dwellers. The importance of spatially endogenous social mobility is discussed in particular with respect to social structures and institutions - such as the family or the housing system - that have been systematically impeding residential mobility. The conclusion is that the social mobility of the long-term residents has a varying, context-dependent importance for the analysis of segregation patterns and tendencies which in many cases is unwittingly neglected. © 2004 SAGE Publications