This article provides empirical results on patterns of native and immigrant geographic mobility in France. Using longitudinal data, we measure mobility from one French municipality (commune) to another over time and estimate the effect of the initial municipality's ethnic composition on the probability of moving out. These data allow us to use panel techniques to correct for biases related to selection based on geographic and individual unobservables. Our findings tend to discredit the hypothesis of a -white flight‖ pattern in residential mobility dynamics in France. Some evidence does show ethnic avoidance mechanisms in natives' relocating. We also find a strong negative and highly robust effect of co-ethnics' presence on immigrants' geographic mobility. Keywords geographic mobility, white flight, ethnic clustering, ethnic preferences, contextual variables Studies of ethnicity have lacked scientific and political legitimacy for decades in France, but French urban sociology is increasingly concerned with this issue.1 During the 2005 riots, black and Arab youth in the French suburbs were primarily depicted in violent images. The media and some politicians linked the riots to immigrants' failed assimilation and the rise of communitarianism in France. At the same time, scholars are increasingly using ghettoization terminology, usually regarded as specific to the U.S. context, to describe French urban dynamics. This debate has lacked evidence regarding the extent to which neighborhood ethnic characteristics are driving geographic mobility.We seek to describe natives' and immigrants' 2 geographic mobility in France, as well as how these groups react to neighborhoods' ethnic compositions. We build on U.S. literature concerning the effect of ethnic preferences on mobility for whites and minorities and discuss its relevance for France. Our empirical analyses rely on unique data that combine longitudinal individual information on geographic mobility with contextual aggregated socioeconomic and ethnic characteristics of residential areas. This panel data structure allows us to control for effects of individual and geographic unobserved characteristics on mobility, thus enhancing confidence in our estimates. Findings show very little support for -French white flight‖ in outmigration but some support for avoidance patterns in relocating. On the other hand, we find the ethnic clustering pattern to be highly robust.
IN SEARCH OF WHITE FLIGHT: UNDERLYING HYPOTHESES AND LIMITATIONSClassical sociologists depict geographic mobility as the channel through which ethnic segregation can lose ground (Duncan and Lieberson 1959;Park and Burgess 1921;). Geographic 2 mobility is thus seen as a sign-or an outcome-of the assimilation process (Massey and Denton 1985;South, Crowder, and Chavez 2005). Studies on patterns and trends of segregation in the United States emphasize the limitations of this framework, especially for African Americans (Iceland and Scopilliti 2008;Massey and Denton 1993). The very slow decrease in racial...