Migrant Populations and Residential Segregation in Southern Europe: An Overview

The aim of this contribution is to analyse the peculiarity of the Southern European context in the European migration system. In particular, the first part of this chapter describes the transition of the Southern European countries from areas of origin to areas of destination of international migration flows. The differences in terms of country of citizenship or country of birth of the migrant populations are discussed. The second part is based on an analysis of the literature and the results of a set of studies that were previously carried out within the D4I data challenge “Integration of migrants in cities”. The levels of residential segregation in some European countries (i.e. France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and United Kingdom) are analysed comparatively, while trying to highlight existing similarities and differences in residential segregation. The causes of the differences are discussed and are mainly linked to the characteristics of the local labour markets and their capacity to integrate the migrant populations.