Inaugural Lecture by Professor Nissa Finney Race, Place and Home

In the early 2000s it was claimed that Britain was ‘sleepwalking to segregation'. Twenty years on an average neighbourhood in Britain is more ethnically mixed than a few decades ago but less age-mixed and less wealth-mixed. In other words, neighbourhoods are becoming more similar to one another in their ethnic make-up but more different from one another in their age and wealth profiles. This lecture will demonstrate how this has come to be, how housing markets and individual preferences intertwine to shape local populations and housing experiences.
The talk will then unpick this portrait of social and spatial dynamics in terms of inequalities: how the global and national processes of migration and ageing unravel locally and are threaded with economic disadvantage and racism that create injustice in the ability to find and make a home. The lecture will conclude on a hopeful note, with examples of how innovative Social Science is illuminating inequalities and how, even in contexts of great hardship, strong sense of belonging nationally and to local places pervades.