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This article presents an analysis of multidimensional segregation in Stockholm. Drawing on official statistics and existing empirical research, spatial and socio-economic segregation are found to be increasingly tied to ethnicity, in a global city largely divided between affluent inner-city and marginalized peripheral boroughs. The analysis finds that migration flows' impact on Stockholm's asymmetric development must be understood in a historical perspective, as particular interactions between structural constraints and individual factors, generated by ongoing processes of residential segregation and labour market segmentation. Coinciding with Sweden's shift towards refugee and family dependent immigration, these processes are traced to public policies driving housing market liberalization and financialization, and labour market bifurcation. Reversal of the city's pronounced segregation, where cumulative interactions of segmentation processes cause a vicious circle of downward assimilation of less-qualified migrants and reactive ethnicity among marginalized immigrant youths, constitutes a formidable task Swedish Governments have so far failed to properly address. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Johan Sandberg's article offers a tale of socio-economic polarization in the processes of immigration, as found in the mutual conditioning of residential segregation and segmented labour markets. The analysis offers a way to link specific to more general mechanisms generating social inequalities; for example, the specific mechanisms of filtering, gentrification, and (informal) social network ties produce a hard-to-reverse ratchet effect. Future analysis could gain from looking at potential counter-tendencies in housing areas not yet considered. Johan Sandberg's article raises fascinating questions in a comparative European perspective, in particular with respect to uneven neoliberalization in a social democratic welfare state and its effects on segregation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]