TY - THES
KW - Ethnic groups
KW - Germans
KW - Settlers
KW - Urbanization
KW - Cultural integration
KW - Methodology
AU - Feng Hou
AB - This study examined mechanisms through which summary indices of residential segregation respond to specific patterns of neighbourhood ethnic composition changes. The analytic procedures included three steps. First, a classification scheme was developed to identify various types of neighbourhoods undergoing different processes of transition in ethnic composition. This scheme bypassed the problems inherent in comparing ethnic transition for groups with different proportions, and indicated the effect of ethnic composition changes in neighbourhoods on the unevenness of ethnic distribution at the city level. Second, this scheme was applied to compare patterns of ethnic transition among British, French, German, Italian, Jewish, Black, Chinese, and South Asian groups in Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. Third, the contributions of each type of neighbourhood to changes in summary indices were calculated. Consequently, the direct correspondence of summary indices to ethnic transition was evaluated. This study revealed that ethnic over-representation in neighbourhoods in all three cities is not necessarily associated with the attraction of additional members of the group, or with resistance to members of other ethnic groups. However, the French and Germans tend to increase their proportions in the British over-represented tracts, while the three visible minority groups tend to attract each other in Toronto and Montreal. Although the initial socioeconomic standing of the neighbourhood may affect changes in proportion for some groups, changes in ethnic compositions in a short period do not substantially alter a neighbourhood's socioeconomic standing. This study revealed that the dissimilarity index and Gini index are limited or even biased in reflecting neighbourhood ethnic transition. They offset some opposite processes which either increase or decrease the degree of unevenness, and thus cannot distinguish the individual contributions of different types of ethnic transition. Also, changes in isolation and interaction indices are almost perfectly related to changes in ethnic composition, but are not affected by changes in unevenness. Finally, the correlation ratio index is not as unique and useful as suggested by the literature. This study demonstrated the difficulty of linking neighbourhood changes to existing summary indices, and provided some methodological guideposts for further studies.
C7 - Unknown(0)
CY - Canada
ET - Ph.D.
ID - 414
LA - English
M1 - Dissertation/Thesis
M3 - Print(0)
PB - The University of Western Ontario (Canada)
PP - Canada
PY - 1997
T1 - Neighbourhood ethnic transition and summary segregation indices: A methodological assessment
ER -