Immigration and social interaction. Do diverse environments matter?

Abstract:

The article investigates to what extent the presence of immigrants in urban environments is reflected in the personal social interactions of their residents. Starting from the assumption that social interactions are complex products of contextual conditions, individual characteristics and personal preferences, we examine potentially varying effects of the presence of immigrants in a neighbourhood and city on different forms of social interaction, i.e., on neighbourhood contacts as well as on weak and strong ties.

The article contributes to the literatures on social interactions and on consequences of immigration. The analysis is based on a unique data set for a random sample of German urban neighbourhoods. We can show that, in German cities, interaction between the long-term residents and those of immigrant background is frequent and common – in the neighbourhoods and in the social networks more generally.

However, evidence regarding the impact of the neighbourhood as opportunity context for encounters and ensuing closer interactions is mixed. While a higher immigration-related diversity of the residential environment increases the frequency of inter-group contact in these environments, effects of differing opportunities for interaction in the residential environment on network ties could not be demonstrated. We suggest that this may be explained by a possibly limited importance of neighbourhood, as compared with other social contexts, and by the relative recency of immigration.