activity space restricted to neighbourhood residents. In this way their daily life is dominated by the neighbourhood, and therefore the neighbourhood influences strongly the behaviour and attitudes of its residents (Wilson, 1989). According to this literature it is very difficult for the residents to escape such districts, for they do not have the financial means to move away. But also discrimination plays an important part in the housing market. The areas with a concentration of ethnic minorities have a bad name among the general public. A lot of the residents of these areas believe that the quality of life in these areas has declined which is mainly caused by the arrival of ‘foreigners’ (Tesser et al., 1998). In the research of Tesser et al. (1998) a division is made between migrants who live in the concentration areas temporarily. For these groups the concentration areas are mere the area of arrival which is followed by sprawl and societal integration. The second groups however are the migrants who stay and live in the concentration areas more or less forever. In this case the fear of concentration areas developing into ghettos of poverty arises. There is no definite conclusion for the Netherlands deriving from this research. However it can be stated that another possibility is not considered: some migrants might see their housing situation as a desirable one. With this perspective the area might turn into a kind of ethnic enclave (Marcuse, 1997).
Fig. 7.1 Positive ethnic concentration
The neighbourhood can most certainly also have a positive effect. Forrest and Keans (2001) state that over time individuals might attach more importance to the neighbourhood, due to macrodevelopments as for example globalisation. Also the social solidarity of neighbours within a neighbourhood is seen as an important phenomena. The neighbourhood can in this case be seen as an enforcement of local ties and networks. It is widely acknowledged that good social contacts are considered a basic need. In this line of thought it is logical that people like to live in neighbourhoods where they can find people like themselves, we also saw this in a previous section about the moving dynamics (Bolt et al., 2006). The neighbourhood becomes a key place in the definition of the social world of its residents (van Beckhoven and van Kempen, 2003). Furthermore the quality of these neighbourhoods and affiliated contacts strengthen the capacity of residents to participate abundantly in society (Healy, 1998 in van Beckhoven and van Kempen, 2003). So in order to conclude, concentration of certain groups according to their background (for instance ethnicity) is not necessarily a negative phenomena. In fact the concentration of these groups can have beneficiary effects in relation to bonding and bridging capital of its residents (Granovetter, 1973; Putnam, 2000; Tunas, 2008). I will return to this theory later in this chapter.