Occupation and ethnicity: Patterns of residential segregation in Riga two decades after socialism

This chapter discusses the patterns of socio-economic and ethnic residential segregation between 2000 and 2011 censuses. In our study, we draw our empirical evidence from the capital city because it is widely acknowledged that the most notable social change and the fastest economic growth has tended to be concentrated and much more advanced in capital cities. Moreover, little is known about the ethnic dimension of socio-economic segregation, despite the existence of sizeable minority populations. The focus on ethnicity is important, since Riga is the only capital in the Baltic States where the ethnic majority in absolute numbers is less than the non-Latvian minority. In our research, most importantly, we need to clarify how growing socio-economic inequality in the light of systemic changes and economic restructuring relates to patterns of socio-economic and ethnic segregation. Our key findings show that despite growing income inequality, the levels of socio-economic segregation in Riga are rather low but slightly increasing over the observed decade. This chapter concludes that ethnic segregation dominates over socio-economic segregation in Riga and that the increase in ethnic segregation was found for higher occupational categories of Latvians.