Sinks and Sluices: Contrasting Dynamics in Spatial Assimilation Pathways

Abstract

This study examines how neighbourhoods can be understood through their functional roles in immigrant settlement trajectories. The analysis treats neighbourhoods not as fixed containers of deprivation, concentration, or opportunity but as dynamic and shaped by group-specific settlement patterns. Drawing on register data on first-generation immigrants arriving in Denmark between 2007 and 2012, internal migration is modelled through immigrant-group networks of resettlement flows between neighbourhoods. The concepts of sinks and sluices are used as analytical relabellings of existing theoretical insights about settlement, stability, and onward mobility. The Hubs and Authorities (HITS) algorithm is used to identify sinks as prominent destinations with limited onward movement and sluices as central transitional locations. These classifications are then linked to a composite measure of integration-related outcomes, based on selected socioeconomic and household-related indicators observed at settlement and five years later.

The findings do not show a uniform association between sink or sluice functions and integration-related outcomes. Sink neighbourhoods are, on average, associated with somewhat higher reductions in disadvantage than sluices, especially in the second cohort, but this pattern is modest and varies across immigrant groups, cohorts, and specific neighbourhoods. The same neighbourhood may function as a site of prolonged settlement for one immigrant group and as a transitional location for another; or it may change function over time. The main contribution is therefore methodological and conceptual: the sink-sluice distinction identifies neighbourhoods that occupy central roles in immigrant settlement patterns and may warrant closer investigation as potential sites of spatial assimilation, enclave formation, constrained mobility, selective movement, or neighbourhood succession. The study thus offers a way to move beyond general claims about segregation toward a more differentiated account of how place, mobility, and integration are connected.

* This article belongs to a special issue on “Migration Trajectories Across the Life Course”.