Residential Attainment of Immigrants in the Private Rented Sector:

Ethnic Differences in Access to Advantaged Neighborhoods

Abstract

    Previous studies on the residential choices of immigrants have mainly focused on the locations to and from which they move, presumably assuming that immigrants are free to choose the residential locations they want according to employment opportunities. However, place stratification theory, which has not been fully discussed in the Japanese literature, predicts that some immigrant groups are less able to convert their socioeconomic resource into advantaged residential locations due to the ethnic/racial prejudice and housing discrimination. Using microdata from Census 2020, this study helps fill this gap by evaluating how the probability of having access to rental housing in advantaged neighborhoods differs between minority and majority groups. Analyses here reveal that except for American immigrants, all immigrant groups ― i.e., Korean, Chinese, Filipino, and Brazilian―are less likely to reside in advantaged neighborhoods compared to Japanese nationals. Only the immigrants from the United States can achieve better residential outcomes than the Japanese, even when controlling for related factors. Results also indicate that consistent with the place stratification model, the effects of occupation and education on residential attainment tend to be weaker for the Chinese, Filipino, and Brazilian immigrants than the Japanese with comparable SES. Overall, this study demonstrates that there are structural barriers the immigrant groups face in the private rental housing market in Japan.