Abstract
Understanding the housing experiences and residential mobility of migrant populations is crucial to facilitate their integration into the host societies. Yet, little is known about their experiences across generations, origin groups, and country contexts. This paper aims to address these gaps by investigating residential mobility and housing changes among immigrants, their descendants, and natives in five countries (the UK, France, Germany, Switzerland, and Sweden) with different housing markets and migrant populations. Using longitudinal data and applying Poisson regression models on aggregated occurrence-exposure data from 2010-2019, we first compare the risk of a residential move across migrant generations, origins groups, and host countries. Second, we estimate competing risks models to study the propensity to move to different housing tenure types (i.e., homeownership, private renting, and social renting). The results show distinct patterns of residential moves among migrant generations and origin groups. First, immigrants’ levels of residential mobility vary across origin groups and country contexts: in the UK and Switzerland, migrant groups have higher residential mobility rates than natives, whereas in France, Germany, and Sweden, most immigrant groups have a similar risk of moving as the natives. Second, in all countries, immigrants, especially from non-European countries, are less likely to be homeowners and more likely to be social or private renters. Some of the differences in mobility and homeownership rates decline across migrant generations, however we still find lower levels of homeownership and higher levels of social renting among some descendant groups. This study sheds light on persistent differences in residential mobility and housing patterns among immigrants, their descendants, and natives in Europe and contributes to provide a better understanding of the role of the country context in perpetuating housing inequalities.