Trapped in One’s Own Housing: The Limitations of Housing Choices in Segregated Roma Neighborhoods = Az én házam az én börtönöm: A lakásdöntések korlátai a szegregátumokban

Due to their historical development, urban and rural segregated neighborhoods in Hungary play a special role in the housing pathways of Roma. Social inequalities associated with the Roma go hand in hand with the spatial distance and segmentation of the housing market. There are drivers at both the policy and contextual level which foster the growth and preservation of segregated neighborhoods, reinforcing the growing inequality between segregated neighborhoods and other housing market segments which manifest at the institutional level in the current Hungarian context. A conceptual model of segregation was designed to show the linkages and mutually reinforcing mechanisms of segregation at the contextual level based on secondary analysis of available statistical data. Survey data were used to compare the mobility pattern of marginalized families, Roma families, and the general population at the household level. The emerging patterns among Roma households – which seem to be significantly different from the general trend – cannot be explained by their social deprived status only. The data demonstrate and illustrate that there have been considerable improvements in Roma housing conditions in the past decades, and that the “gap” in housing quality has somewhat closed. However, the proportion of those living in segregated neighborhoods has not diminished at all, and a growth in the concentration of the population of the same ethnicity has taken place. Compared to the overall population, the housing pathways of the Roma population seem to be markedly different. Within the general population the share of upward movers is higher in the youngest age group compared to the Roma sample and increases considerably when individuals are in their thirties before decreasing slowly across two age groups. The growth of upward movers within the Roma population remains modest, and gains pace only when people are in their fifties. A decline in the value of housing of those individuals classified within the eldest age groups is characteristic of both the general population and the Roma sample. The triggers for becoming trapped in segregated neighborhoods are unfinished and low education, large household size (it triples in case of 6 person households compared with single households), Roma-only social network (more than two times compared with 50-50% of Roma and nonRoma friends), smaller settlement size, unemployment (nearly double the odds), and lack of a reciprocal support network. At the local intervention level, the qualitative analysis showed the caveats of neighborhood based policy interventions. The micro-simulation of segregation processes relating to discrimination, income gap, value gap and perception of decline in a neighborhood demonstrates the necessity to tackle these issues in their complexity, and to address sectoral policy linkages which result in the above-mentioned differences. For the effectiveness of neighborhood based local projects, these aspects should at least be carefully observed and followed up. Thus, as the analysis confirms, the pace of decline can be halted and modified only with integrated measures.