TRANSFORMACIONES EN LA ESTRUCTURA DEL NEGOCIO BANCARIO

The proportion of non-Western immigrants in the Danish population rose sharply during the period 1985-2003, as Chapter 1 of this book describes. Figure 8.1 shows how the proportion of non-Western immigrants to Danes in the population increased from 1.5% in 1985 to 5.9% in 2003. This trend is reflected

in the Isolation Index, which rose from 9.2% in 1985 to 23.4% in 2003. By the end of the period, a randomly-selected non-Western immigrant had a greater chance of randomly encountering another non-Western immigrant in his or her residential district than a recipient of welfare benefits had of encountering another person receiving welfare benefits, for whom the Isolation Index value in 2003 was 20.5% There were, however, many fewer non-Western immigrants than there were recipients of welfare benefits. This means that the homes of immigrants must have been more concentrated into a smaller number of residential districts than was the case for recipients of employment-related transfer incomes, i.e. benefits such as unemployment pay, social security benefits, incapacity benefits, activation allowances, etc. as described in Chapter 6. The same picture can be seen from the Dissimilation Index, which stood at 54.1% in 2003 for non-Western immigrants, as against 27.3% for recipients of transfer incomes. The Isolation Index value for a division of the population according to education and gross income was only 21%.

Figure 8.1. Index calculations. Non-Western immigrants and second- generation immigrants, 1985-2003.

Source: Own calculations based on register data from Statistics Denmark and Geomatic.

One of the explanations for the high index value probably lies in the marriage patterns of non-Western immigrants, which are briefly described in Chapter 1. Non-Western immigrants (unlike recipients of welfare benefits) usually marry within their national group, and this in itself can contribute to increasing the concentration of immigrants in a given area.

Even though the Dissimilation Index for non-Western immigrants was high in 2003, Figure 8.1 shows that it was even higher at the start of the period covered

0.0 10.0 20.0 30.0 40.0 50.0 60.0 70.0 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 Isolation Index Proportion of non-Western immigrants

by the study, at 60.1%. After that, the Dissimilation Index, which measures unevenness in residential distribution, exhibited a slightly downward trend, especially in the periods immediately subsequent to 1994 and 1999. Part of the explanation for this was undoubtedly the government’s new housing policy, whereby newly arrived refugees were deliberately placed in housing spread over much of Denmark. However, the fact that this policy, which gave rise to a very widespread distribution of refugees, only brought about such a modest decline in the value of the index was probably a reflection of the fact that many refugees subsequently chose to move to the larger towns.

To help elucidate this issue, Table 8.2 shows the residential patterns for people originating from various countries. The figures presented are for the last day of each of the years 1994, 1998 and 2003.

Table 8.2. Patterns of places of residence for the largest national groups among non-Western immigrants in Denmark.

Dissimilation Index Isolation Index individualsNumber of

1994 1998 2003 1994 1998 2003 1994 2003 Afghanistan _{97.5 95.0 84.7 2.3 2.5 3.0 1,180 10,192} The former Yugoslavia 80.9 69.8 66.7 4.6 7.6 8.2 13,451 44,037 Iraq _{87.6 83.4 73.7 3.7 5.8 6.7 6,378 25,492} Iran _{76.7 74.1 69.8 3.3 2.9 2.5 11,039 14,065} Lebanon 85.7 86.4 84.5 15.1 20.6 22.7 15,057 21,620 Pakistan _{87.0 86.2 84.1 6.9 7.7 7.5 14,585 19,082} Somalia _{90.9 86.9 86.5 3.5 7.0 10.7 5,237 16,708} Sri Lanka _{87.5 86.3 83.1 4.6 6.1 5.3 7,148 10,307} Turkey _{80.2 79.5 75.9 13.2 15.9 15.5 39,113 53,979} Vietnam _{87.0 84.9 80.4 5.4 6.5 6.3 9,138 12,411}

Source: Own calculations based on register data from Statistics Denmark and Geomatic.

It was not possible to obtain figures for people with different types of residence permit, so it is not known exactly which of these people were refugees, family members reunited with previous immigrants, or guest workers. If we consider the immigrants and second generation immigrants from the former Yugoslavia, we can assume that most of the people included in the statistics at the end of 1994 were guest workers and family members or second generation immigrants born in Denmark. In 1994 the Dissimilation Index for this group was at a level of 80.9%, but it fell to 69.8% in 1998 after the arrival in Denmark of a very large group of refugees from the region.

The Dissimilation Index also fell over time for the other nationalities, but in general not particularly steeply in the period from 1994 to 1998. On the other hand, the index dropped very sharply between 1998 and 2003 for Afghans and Iraqis, many of whom arrived as refugees after 1999. Since there were very few

people from these countries living in Denmark in 1994, it is necessary to interpret the Dissimilation Index values for this year with caution. In general, however, the index values were very high for all groups, which is strong evidence of a high level of residential segregation for each individual group. The values for the Isolation Index reflect the fact that people from the former Yugoslavia were spread significantly more thinly across the country than the Turks, who were certainly a larger group, and therefore had a greater chance of randomly encountering a fellow countryman. However, it was people from Lebanon – in reality, often stateless Palestinians – who were most likely to encounter a fellow countryman in their residential districts. The index value rose in step with the increase in the number of Palestinians in Denmark, whereas the Dissimilation Index value for this group did not change very much.

The proportion of immigrants in the population is generally greatest in the larger towns in Denmark, but even for towns with very similar proportions of immigrants in the population there were significant differences in 2003 in the extent to which immigrants and Danes lived in the same residential districts. A comparison between the four largest cities in Denmark (Copenhagen, Aarhus, Odense and Aalborg) showed that even though the proportion of immigrants in the population was a little higher in Copenhagen than in Aarhus and Odense, the probability of a non-Western immigrant encountering another non-Western immigrant by chance in his or her residential district was 40-41% in Aarhus and Odense as against only 26% in Copenhagen. This was because the homes of immigrants were more widely dispersed geographically in Copenhagen than in the other two cities. In Copenhagen, Isolation Index values of the same level were only found in certain districts, such as Nørrebro, Brønshøj, Ishøj and Brøndby, where the proportions of immigrants in the population were far higher than those found in Aarhus and Odense.

Of the immigrants living in the medium-sized towns of Denmark, i.e. towns other than the four largest but with populations in excess of 10,000, most had homes in towns close to Copenhagen such as Farum, Frederiksværk and Helsingør, where the proportion of immigrants in the population was greater than 10% in all cases. However, it was in the towns of Haderslev, Ikast and Korsør, all of them far from Copenhagen, that the housing pattern of non- Western immigrants was most different from that of the remainder of the population. Of the medium-sized towns, Ikast was the one where a non-Western immigrant had the greatest chance of randomly encountering another immigrant in his or her residential district.

A convenient explanation for immigrants’ very unusual patterns of residence might seem to lie in their weak connection with the labour market. If that were the case, then it could be expected that their patterns of residence would resemble those of others with similarly low incomes. However, a comparison of

the residence patterns of immigrants and of Danes with the same level of income indicates that this is not the case. Among those immigrants who were in the top 25% of income earners in the population, 59% would have had to move in order to create an even distribution of residence in districts where Danes with the same income level live. Among the immigrants in the lowest 25% of income earners in the population, 50% would have had to move for their residence distribution to be the same as that of Danes with the same income level.