The wish to leave ethnically concentrated neighbourhoods: The role of perceived social cohesion and interethnic attitudes

This paper aims to investigate the motives behind people's wishes to move out of ethnically concentrated neighbourhoods. We focus on the impact of perceived social cohesion and negative interethnic attitudes and hypothesise on moving wishes of ethnic majority and minority residents in the Netherlands (i.e. Turks and Moroccans). Data were derived from the first wave of the 2009 Netherlands Longitudinal Lifecourse Study, collected in 35 municipalities covering 800 neighbourhoods. Taking into account household, housing and other neighbourhood attributes, multilevel logistic regression models show that ethnic majority residents are more likely to have a wish to move when they live in neighbourhoods with a large percentage of ethnic minorities. This can be explained by a lack of perceived social cohesion, but not by their negative attitudes towards ethnic minorities. Controlling for housing and neighbourhood conditions, the percentage of ethnic minorities neither increases nor decreases minority residents' moving wishes