Stockholm: Social mechanisms of migrants' emplacement in a segregated global city

This article presents an analysis of multidimensional segregation in Stockholm.Drawing on official statistics and existing empirical research, spatial and socioeconomic segregation are found to be increasingly tied to ethnicity, in a global city largely divided between affluent inner-city and marginalized peripheral boroughs. The analysis finds that migration flows’ impact on Stockholm’s asymmetric development must be understood in a historical perspective, as particular interactions between structural constraints and individual factors, generated by ongoing processes of residential segregation and labour market segmentation. Coinciding with Sweden’s shift towards refugee and family dependent immigration, these processes are traced to public policies driving housing market liberalization and financialization, and labour market bifurcation. Reversal of the city’s pronounced segregation, where cumulative interactions of segmentation processes cause a vicious circle of downward assimilation of less-qualified migrants and reactive ethnicity amongmarginalized immigrant youths, constitutes a formidable task Swedish Governments have so far failed to properly address