The Effect of Limited Mobility on the Experienced Segregation of Foreign-born Minorities

2024-06-29

AI Summary

This study investigates how constrained transportation accessibility contributes to “experienced segregation”—a form of spatial isolation manifested through daily activity patterns—among foreign-born populations. Method: Leveraging anonymized smartphone trajectory data from 320,000 individuals in Sweden, the study integrates spatial interaction modeling, counterfactual simulation, and a novel metric of experienced segregation to quantitatively decompose the contributions of mobility constraints versus homophilous preferences to observed segregation. Contribution/Results: Foreign-born individuals exhibit significantly higher levels of daytime activity-based segregation than native-born Swedes. Mobility limitations account for over 85% of this segregation gap—substantially exceeding the contribution of place-based preferences. Inadequate public transport access thus emerges as a critical structural barrier to social integration. Counterfactual analyses further demonstrate that improving transit connectivity in residential neighborhoods inhabited by foreign-born populations effectively mitigates experienced segregation, providing empirical support for inclusive urban planning and transport policy.

Technology Category

• Application Domains: Transportation
• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Optimization of Spatio-temporal Systems
• Humans and AI: AI for Accessibility

Application Category

• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Practical large-scale studies of user experience
• Security and Privacy: Data transparency and provenance
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: The sharing economy

Abstract

Segregation is a key challenge in promoting more diverse and inclusive cities. Research based on large-scale mobility data indicates that segregation between majority and minority groups persists in daily activities beyond residential areas, like visiting shops and restaurants. Aspects including lifestyle differences, homophily, and mobility constraints have been proposed as drivers of this phenomenon, but their contributions remain poorly quantified. Here, we elucidate how different mechanisms influence segregation outside home, looking at the distinctive segregation experienced by native and foreign-born individuals. Our study is based on the movement of ~320,000 individual smartphone devices collected in Sweden, where immigration creates profound divides. We find that while day-to-day activities lead to mixing for native-born individuals, foreign-born individuals remain segregated in their out-of-home activities. Using counterfactual simulations, we show that this heterogeneous effect of mobility on experienced segregation results mainly from two mechanisms: homophily and limited travel, i.e. foreign-born individuals (i) tend to visit destinations visited by similar individuals, and (ii) have limited mobility ranges. We show that homophily, as represented by destination preference, plays a minor role, while limited mobility, associated with reduced transport access, limits opportunities for foreign-born minorities to diversify their encounters. Our findings suggest that enhancing transport accessibility in foreign-born concentrated areas could reduce social segregation.

Problem

• Limited Mobility
• Social Isolation
• Minority Groups

Innovation

• Large-scale Mobile Data
• Spatial Segregation Analysis
• Transportation Accessibility