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The socio-economic structure of a city, and the spatial allocation of different social groups, can be interpreted as the spatially objective reflection of their complicated system of social relations. As the house or apartment has the highest value among the available durable consumer goods, and as the different social groups try to express social distances through their spatial segregation, we believe that the changes in the spatial segregation of these groups within cities can be interpreted as one of the indicators of changes in basic structural inequalities. Thus the analysis of residential segregation can help us to understand these factors better. This study deals with the patterns of residential segregation of the most disadvantaged ethnic group, the gypsy minority, in Budapest. The proportion of this group in the capital city was about 2% (about half the Hungarian average) in 1987, when the present research was carried out. However, due to the recent economic crisis, unemployment and the decreasing standard of living, especially in the most backward eastern regions of the country where most of the gypsies live, the migration of this minority group to urban centres, and especially to Budapest, has been increasing. Besides categorizing the different forms of housing that gypsy families live in, the paper describes their significantly different patterns of socio-economic and ethnic residential segregation.

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