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In many Western European cities politicians express concerns about the lack of integration of immigrants from the so-called less-developed countries. A core issue in the debate is the relationship between the residential segregation of ethnic minorities and integration or assimilation processes. This paper deals with the relationship between segregation and integration in the context of two opposing visions in the debate in the Netherlands. Empirical evidence is presented on both the level of segregation and the indicators of integration as well as the relation between the two. A major conclusion is that the relationship between segregation and integration suffers from too much political and too little scholarly attention. Politicians focus too much on large-scale spatial social engineering projects. The empirical evidence shown in this paper provides support for more policy attention in the domains of education and labour market access. Policies in these fields have had much more positive effects in the past than many want us to believe. It is underlined that education appears to be a key factor for successful integration, both in socio-economic terms and in social and cultural terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Segregation is a central concept in both academic and policy debates on urban issues. It has been argued that the process of globalisation results in increased social polarisation and subsequently sharper spatial segregation. Indeed, many politicians express a fear of rising segregation, envisioning the emergence of 'ghettos' or as it is called in the Netherlands 'income neighbourhoods'. In order to prevent concentrations of poverty from forming, a new area-based policy was formulated which aimed to restructure the urban housing market at the neighbourhood level and mix low-quality with high-quality houses. Such a concern with social mix has become common in a number of developed countries. In this regard the analysis has a wide relevance. This paper explores these ideas both by discussing the theoretical framework underpinning the policy, and by examining empirical support for it. Since the policy of housing-quality mixing is still in the first phase of implementation, relevant longitudinal data is not yet available. As a consequence our evaluation addresses present poverty concentrations and housing stock (mix) characteristics in the city of Amsterdam. By comparing neighbourhoods that already have a 'mixed' housing stock to homogeneous neighbourhoods, it has been possible to see whether mixing really does correspond to significantly lower poverty rates. It turns out that the empirical facts are quite different from the expected results: mixing does not in fact reduce poverty. It is concluded that the policy lacks an empirical basis. Housing-mix policy requires substantial budgets, while the goal of reducing poverty cannot be reached. As an alternative, we suggest that poverty is a personal characteristic and that it is therefore preferable to approach poverty directly instead of hoping for the results of a dubious 'neighbourhood effect'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]