ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the influence of important events at an international scale on the ways in which racial and ethnic groups have been labeled and subjugated in western societies. Race and ethnicity are socially constructed categories. The study of contemporary racism has come to occupy a central place in social geography. Ethnicity relates to the culture and lifestyle of a particular group linked by birth, which marks them out as being different from others. The chapter explores recent changes at different scales in the geographies of ethnic groups in European countries. Early geographical studies of race and ethnicity were largely concerned with measuring levels of spatial concentration of different groups. The image of the North American black ghetto came to represent the most extreme form of segregation of, and racism against, a particular ethnic group. Residential segregation is just one measure, albeit an important one, of the relationship of ethnic minority groups to wider society.
