The article investigates whether processes similar to 'White flight' and 'White avoidance', known from American research on residential segregation, have played a role in the increased concentration of immigrants that has affected many residential areas in Swedish cities during the 1990s. By means of a comprehensive and unique dataset, processes of neighbourhood transition and mobility are described and analysed for a selection of residential areas that have experienced increased immigrant concentration during the 1990s. The results show that 'Swedish avoidance', i.e. low in-migration rates among Swedes, rather than 'Swedish flight', i.e. high out-migration rates, has been the main driving-force behind the production and reproduction of immigrant concentration areas.

Like many other Western European governments, the Swedish government has launched an area-based urban policy in order to solve the problems of the distressed neighbourhoods in the largest cities. However, in the current policy it is not clear whether the primary aim is to address the problems of individuals, or if the aim is to change the market position of the distressed areas. The intervention might be successful in terms of assisting residents in finding jobs and better education, but that might not improve the general position of the areas targeted, since people who make a socio-economic career very often move out of the areas, to be replaced by poorer and less well-established residents. By drawing upon a comprehensive and unique set of data the paper analyses the issues of residential mobility and selective migration, with special focus on distressed neighbourhoods in the Stockholm region. The results clearly indicate that the migration flows of these neighbourhoods are indeed selective. The people who move in are more likely to be unemployed and dependent on social benefits and have on average lower incomes than those who move out and those who remain in the neighbourhoods. This simultaneous outflow of relatively well-off residents and inflow of weaker and more marginalised groups has the effect of reproducing the distressed character of the neighbourhoods.

The issue of residential segregation has been on the Swedish political agenda since the early 1970s. This paper analyses the background for this interest, presents some basic features of socio-economic and ethnic residential segregation, and discusses some fundamental contextual properties regarding the Swedish welfare state, its institutional set-up and changes in housing and other policies that have affected the conditions for segregation processes. Three more specific anti-segregation policies are also identified and analysed: housing and social mix policy (first initiated in the 1970s); the refugee dispersal policy (initiated in the 1980s); and the area-based urban policy (initiated in the 1990s). Of these three, the last two have a clear ethnic focus while mix policies primarily aim for socio-economic and demographic mix. The analysis shows that none of the policies have managed to affect levels of segregation more than marginally, the reasons being ineffective implementation (the mix policy), failures in the design (the refugee dispersal policy) or conflicting aims inherent in the policy (area-based interventions).

Most explanatory frameworks within segregation research interpret patterns of ethnic residential segregation as the result of how members of different ethnic groups have moved (or not moved) within the city and to the city from the surrounding world. Yet, few attempts have been made to proceed beyond relatively static accounts based on descriptions and analysis of patterns of segregation, to address more directly the dynamics behind the patterns. In this article, a longitudinal, individual‐based data‐set is used in order to analyse the dynamics, in terms of migration and natural population change, that have reproduced and transformed patterns of segregation in Göteborg (Gothenburg), Sweden, between 1995 and 2000. The analysis deals with questions concerning changes in the degree of concentration and dispersal of different minority groups, and the role of the minority enclaves as ports of entry to the local housing market for different groups. The findings have relevance for wider theoretical issues related to the interpretation and explanation of ethnic residential segregation. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

In this chapter, we define the concept of housing estates in the Swedish context and provide some information about Stockholm and the historical background to the construction of post-war housing estates. The core research question will then be whether and to what extent initial conditions play a key role for later developments of an estate. Approaching this question, we first provide a statistical overview of developments from 1990 onwards, and then use examples from two estates in Stockholm, one built in the mid-1960s (Bredäng) and one built a few years later (Rinkeby), which now have similar problems of ethnic and socio-economic segregation but have arrived at this situation through very different trajectories. We will analyse these trajectories and identify the key moments leading up to present day convergence in terms of the social challenges facing the estates. Until 1990, the socio-economic situation in the 49 estates we analysed was not very different from the average situation in the Stockholm region. However, the economic crisis of the early 1990s had profound effects and initiated diverging trajectories where some estates continued to do well while others did not. We explain this diverging development with reference to tenure composition, geographical context and building period, all important for also understanding the geography of refugee settlement. This set of explanations is based both on the more structural analysis of all 49 estates and on the more detailed study of our two cases. We end the chapter with a discussion of 40 years of recurrent interventions and of how contemporary challenges are perceived and addressed.