ABSTRACT
Any comprehensive attempt to understand the residential preferences of minority ethnic groups must begin by defining actual residential locations and by identifying changes which these have undergone in recent years. The last chapter highlighted the gap in the Scottish literature regarding minority ethnic residential settlement, housing choices and preferences. It set the scene by providing a summary of the housing experiences of minority ethnic households: first, with a brief overview at the national level, then more in depth at the city level. Evidence of localised settlement patterns and the question of whether they are changing have not been studied over the past ten to fifteen years in Glasgow. In response, this chapter tries to address the gap in the literature by analysing patterns of location and trends across the city region over the census period from 1991 to 2001. Other primary aims of this chapter are: first, to explore the extent to which South Asian households are relocating to or establishing themselves in the suburbs, which will lead us to discussions on the significance of and motivations behind residential dispersal in later chapters; and second, to analyse how population shifts in the suburbs compare to changes within the core and within areas adjacent to the core, which will enable issues surrounding the continued attraction of the core and its neighbouring vicinities to be considered together with issues related to housing mobility. The area of study used in this analysis, as outlined fully in Chapter 4, is Greater Glasgow, i.e. Glasgow City and its surrounding districts, which encompass the suburbs. After identifying changes in the ethnic geography, this chapter will focus in at a smaller scale to look at neighbourhoods chosen as case studies in which qualitative research was conducted with individual households. Thus, in the previous chapter and in the current one we have descended from the national level to the metropolitan area to the neighbourhood.
