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Advances in Analytic Methods for Neighborhood Data 349
of context have been exceeded. However, the context is intimately connected
with residential mobility, as we explore in the next section.
Residential Mobility in Relation to Neighborhoods
The dynamics of neighborhoods embody two different but related themes:
the neighborhood’s status and characteristics compared with other
neighborhoods (city dynamics) and dynamic processes within the specific
neighborhood. Residential mobility is a key to both. Mobility is studied
both at the micro and macro level. The former is primarily concerned
with preferences and constraints of individual movers, and the latter
studies how these preferences and constraints are transformed into
urban moving patterns and flows in the aggregate, often in relation to
residential segregation by ethnicity or income. Selective mobility patterns
on the macro level and self-selection into neighborhoods on the
micro level constitute keys to understanding how residential segregation
and neighborhood inequality are maintained or altered over time.
Although residential segregation encompasses several dimensions,
studies have most often focused on the racial and ethnic dimension: the
production and reproduction of ethnic neighborhoods 4 through ethnically
selective moves.
Traditionally, explanations of ethnic segregation focused on the
moves of minorities, claiming that segregation was a result of voluntary
ethnic clustering due to preferences for living near coethnics and
the putative benefits gained from such a living. However, these theories
have received much criticism for being built on racist ideology and having
little empirical support (Smith 1989; Molina 1997). More common
explanations today point at structural factors constraining the choice
sets of minorities and low-income people [see Bolt and van Kempen
(2003) for an overview]. A complementary body of literature looks at
other forms of constraints, especially ethnic discrimination, which has
been confirmed in several countries; see, for example, Ross and Turner
(2005) for the United States and Robinson (2002) for the United Kingdom.
Yet another body of research focuses on interethnic differences in
socioeconomic status, arguing that minorities’ lower socioeconomic status
explains their overrepresentation in certain areas (Alba and Logan
1993). The emphasis on economic and discriminatory constraints faced
by ethnic minorities has led to a shift in focus toward the moves of those