Racial and Ethnic Residential Segregation in the United Kingdom and United States

John Iceland, Pennsylvania State University
Pablo Mateos, University College London

Immigrant incorporation is a critical social and policy issue confronting a growing number of countries. This study examines one aspect of integration in the United Kingdom and the United States: the residential patterns of immigrants and minority group members. Using data from the 2001 UK census and the 2000 US census, we compute dissimilarity, information theory, and isolation indexes for a set of comparably defined ethnic and foreign-born groups and geographic areas. We further examine the association between nativity and levels of segregation among the panethnic groups. In doing so we aim to arrive at a better understanding of the ethnic incorporation process in the UK and the US.