ABSTRACT
Manchester has been a city of immigrants since its emergence as a great industrial metropolis at the end of the eighteenth century. Immigrants not only built great warehouses, exporting cotton goods and machinery throughout the world, but also a city of culture and radicalism, bringing with them new ideas and founding such cultural landmarks as the Halle orchestra or the University. Migrants also counter the general trend of settlement patterns and household structure in the inner city. By 1981, 86 per cent of housing in the 'core' area of Manchester was local authority owned. The scattering of Pakistani migrants into the inner suburbs was facilitated by the great diversity of housing types prevailing in most southern neighbourhoods, with a parallel diversity in prices. For positivist social scientists studying immigrant settlement patterns the value of housing is often confused with its exchange value.
