RC21 Conference on Urban and Regional Development
https://rc21-vienna2026.org/
Inequalities and the City
Old Issues, New Challenges.
20-22 July 2026
Vienna, Austria
Call for Abstracts
Submit an abstract for Session #86: Intersectional Segregation
Deadline for abstract submissions: December 29th, 2025
Session chair(s): Hilary Silver (George Washington University, Paul Jargowsky (Rutgers University – Camden
In capitalist housing markets, income sorting of residents is inevitable, while states can make it worse. In contrast, mixing policies – social housing, inclusionary zoning, mobility subsidies, and the like — can moderate the development of concentrated poverty. Living in an area of concentrated poverty has been shown to have many short- and long-term negative effects (Chetty et al. 2014; Sampson 2024: Wilson 2020). But when income segregation is wedded to status group membership — be it race, ethnicity, religion, language, and so on — ghettos or enclaves often form (Marcuse 2005), where social exclusion reinforces and exacerbates material disadvantage. This multidimensional or “intersectional” segregation further reduces the odds of out-movement and social mobility, but may foster internal solidarity, identity and community development. Diversity, anti-discrimination, or integration policies targeted at residential group mixing alone are rarer and more fraught.
This panel invites papers to address aspects of intersectional segregation in various national and urban settings, with preference for comparative analyses and theorizing that includes cases in the Global South. While racial segregation in the United States has been extensively studied, and ethnic or migrant segregation has been analyzed in selective European contexts, intersectionally and cumulatively disadvantaged spaces in other countries have received less attention (see Maloutas 2012; Musterd 2020). Segregation theories differ in emphasis on such factors as out–group avoidance or in–group affinity, socio-economic status and human capital, or place stratification reproduced by real estate agents, landlords, mortgage lenders, and neighbors (Crowder and Krysan 2016). Consequently, the impact of contextual variation on theoretical development nested in different regions of the world remains underdeveloped. While US research focuses on spatial concentration, social isolation, and the consolidation of race, place, and poverty, studies in some cities of the Global South call attention to different spatial configurations under such rubrics as informal settlements, townships, or slums in which group identities are under-explored. Relations within and across such neighborhoods also differ (Garido 2021). Papers on the similarities and differences in the specific groups that are spatially segregated, the exclusionary mechanisms at work in producing such group-based concentrations of poverty, and the effects of intersectional segregation are especially welcomed.