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In most societies, resources and opportunities are concentrated in neighborhoods and workplaces occupied by the host population. The spatial assimilation and place stratification theories propose trajectories (the sequences of events) leading to minority and migrant access to or exclusion from these advantageous places. However, most previous research on these theories did not ask whether such theorized trajectories occur. We apply sequence analysis to decade-long residence and workplace histories of newly arrived migrants in Sweden to identify a typology of combined residence-work trajectories. The seven types of trajectories in our typology are characterized by varying degrees of proximity to the host population in residential neighborhoods and workplaces and by different patterns of change in such proximity over time. The pivotal role of socioeconomic gains in spatial assimilation, posited by the namesake theory, is not supported, as we do not find that migrant employment precedes residence alongside the host population. The importance of housing-market discrimination for migrants’ exclusion from host-dominated spaces, posited by place stratification theory, is only weakly supported, as we find that migrants from less affluent countries accumulate disadvantage over time, likely due to discrimination in both the labor and housing markets. Our findings also underscore the need for new theories explaining migrant residential outcomes which apply to contexts where migrant-dense neighborhoods are still forming.

Sequence analysis is increasingly used in the social sciences for the holistic analysis of life-course and other longitudinal data. The usual approach is to construct sequences, calculate dissimilarities, group similar sequences with cluster analysis, and use cluster membership as a dependent or independent variable in a regression model. This approach may be problematic, as cluster memberships are assumed to be fixed known characteristics of the subjects in subsequent analyses. Furthermore, it is often more reasonable to assume that individual sequences are mixtures of multiple ideal types rather than equal members of some group. Failing to account for uncertain and mixed memberships may lead to wrong conclusions about the nature of the studied relationships. In this article, the authors bring forward and discuss the problems of the “traditional” use of sequence analysis clusters as variables and compare four approaches for creating explanatory variables from sequence dissimilarities using different types of data. The authors conduct simulation and empirical studies, demonstrating the importance of considering how sequences and outcomes are related and the need to adjust analyses accordingly. In many typical social science applications, the traditional approach is prone to result in wrong conclusions, and similarity-based approaches such as representativeness should be preferred. peerReviewed

Social connections that reach distant places are advantageous for individuals, firms and cities, providing access to new skills and knowledge. However, systematic evidence on how firms build global knowledge access is still lacking. In this paper, we analyse how global work connections relate to differences in the skill composition of employees within companies and local industry clusters. We gather survey data from 10% of workers in a local industry in Sweden, and complement this with digital trace data to map co-worker networks and skill composition. This unique combination of data and features allows us to quantify global connections of employees and measure the degree of skill similarity and skill relatedness to co-workers. We find that workers with extensive local networks typically have skills related to those of others in the region and to those of their co-workers. Workers with more global ties typically bring in less related skills to the region. These results provide new insights into the composition of skills within knowledge-intensive firms by connecting the geography of network contacts to the diversity of skills accessible through them. Funding Agencies|Swedish Research CouncilSwedish Research CouncilEuropean Commission [2016-01803]; Hungarian Scientific Research FundOrszagos Tudomanyos Kutatasi Alapprogramok (OTKA) [OTKA K-129207]

Despite time being a key element in the theories on international migrants socio-spatial mobility, it has not been sufficiently addressed in empirical research. Most studies focus on discrete transitions between different types of neighbourhoods, potentially missing theoretically important temporal aspects. This article uses sequence analysis to study the residential trajectories of international migrants in Sweden emphasising the timing, order, and duration of residence in neighbourhoods with different poverty levels. It follows individuals of the 2003 arrival cohort during their first 9 years in the country. Results show that 81% of migrants consistently reside in the same type of neighbourhood; 60% consistently live in a deprived area and mere 12% follow a trajectories starting at deprived and ending at middle-income or affluent neighbourhoods. Thus, spatial assimilation is neither the only nor the most frequent trajectory followed by migrants in Sweden. Lastly, there are persistent differences in neighbourhood attainment between immigrant groups, suggesting either place stratification or ethnic preference. Funding Agencies|Forskningsradet om Halsa, Arbetsliv och Valfard (Forte) [2014-1619, 2016-07105]; Vetenskapsradet (VR) [340-2013-5164]; Carl Mannerfelts Fond

The literature on sociability stresses that contact with siblings may endow children with the competences needed for interacting with peers. In this paper I examine the effect of the number of siblings at home on friendship nominations at school. I use data for three countries (Germany, Netherlands, and Sweden) from the first wave of the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey in Four European Countries, which targeted 18,716 pupils aged 15 years old in 480 secondary schools over England, Sweden, Germany, and the Netherlands. I employ the exponential random graph model to explore the effect of having siblings on being nominated as a friend, aggregating the estimates from individual classroom networks using meta-analysis. The estimated average effect of being the only child on forming a network tie is negative, albeit small, suggesting that some children benefit from having siblings when it comes to sociability. However, our models show that there is significant variability in the effect size across classrooms, an indication that this effect may be context dependent and that the average effect size is not a good representation the effect for all networks studied. Moreover, this effect is only marginally significant once other covariates are controlled for. I conclude that there is only weak support for social learning theory, and that there is a need to study the contextual factors mediating the effect of having siblings on sociability.