Krysan Maria
Department of Sociology, Institute of Government and Public Affairs, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL 60607, USA.
Soc Sci Res. 2008 Jun;37(2):581-603. doi: 10.1016/j.ssresearch.2007.06.001.
In a departure from most studies of the causes of racial residential segregation that focus on the three main factors of economics, preferences, and discrimination, this paper examines one of the mechanisms through which segregation may be perpetuated: the housing search process itself. Data come from a 2004 face-to-face survey of an area probability sample of African American and white householders living in the three counties of the Detroit metropolitan area (n = 734). These data are used to address three research questions: (1) What are the strategies people use to find housing, and are there racial differences in those strategies? (2) Do whites and African Americans report similar or different experiences in the search for housing? (3) Do the locations in which people search for housing vary by race? Results show that once controlling for the type of search and background characteristics, the search strategies are generally similar for whites and blacks, though more so for buyers than renters: for example, black renters use more informal strategies and networks than do white renters. Analyses that look at the features of these strategies, however, reveal some significant racial differences. Search experiences are similar in terms of length and number of homes inspected, but other objective and subjective questions about the search show blacks at a disadvantage compared to whites: African Americans submit more offers/applications for homes, report more difficulties, and are much more likely to feel they were taken advantage of during the search. The racial characteristics of the communities in which blacks and whites search are quite different: whites mainly search in white communities, while African Americans search in communities with a variety of racial compositions. The paper concludes with a call for further research on housing search strategies, with particular attention to the role of social networks.
与大多数关注经济、偏好和歧视这三个主要因素的种族居住隔离原因研究不同，本文考察了隔离可能持续存在的一种机制：住房搜索过程本身。数据来自2004年对底特律大都市区三个县的非裔美国人和白人住户进行的区域概率抽样面对面调查（n = 734）。这些数据用于回答三个研究问题：（1）人们用于寻找住房的策略有哪些，这些策略中是否存在种族差异？（2）白人和非裔美国人在寻找住房方面报告的经历是相似还是不同？（3）人们寻找住房的地点是否因种族而异？结果表明，一旦控制了搜索类型和背景特征，白人和黑人的搜索策略总体上相似，不过购房者比租房者更相似：例如，黑人租房者比白人租房者更多地使用非正式策略和网络。然而，对这些策略特征的分析揭示了一些显著的种族差异。在搜索时间长度和查看房屋数量方面，搜索经历相似，但关于搜索的其他客观和主观问题显示，与白人相比，黑人处于劣势：非裔美国人提交的购房报价/申请更多，报告的困难更多，并且更有可能觉得自己在搜索过程中被利用了。黑人和白人搜索的社区的种族特征有很大不同：白人主要在白人社区搜索，而非裔美国人在种族构成多样的社区搜索。本文最后呼吁对住房搜索策略进行进一步研究，尤其要关注社交网络的作用。
