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International Journal of Housing Policy 15Downloaded by [Norsk Institutt for By og] at 07:07 11 March 2013immigrants do not very often live in private renting. A Danish study (Skifter Andersen,2010) has shown that after taking into account that immigrants’ incomes are lower thanthe average, immigrants have a 60% lower probability of living in private rented dwellings.Immigrants thus less often live in private renting in Denmark than what would be expectedconsidering their lower incomes.In Norway and Sweden, cooperatives are important for immigrants, who are overrepresentedin the sector in both countries, especially Sweden. One reason could be that thereis little room for discrimination in the access process. Again the Danish case differs greatlyfrom the others, because immigrants less often live in cooperatives than the population as awhole. Considering their incomes, the probability of immigrants moving into cooperativesis much smaller again because low-income groups in Denmark more often move intocooperatives (Skifter Andersen, 2010).The calculated index of segmentation shown at the bottom of Table 9 indicates substantialdifferences between immigrants’ position on the housing market in the four countries.Finland is the country where the largest deviation is found between immigrants’ housingtenure and the rest of the population. Denmark has the second largest deviation followedby Sweden. In Norway, immigrants’ housing tenure is most like the national average.OvercrowdingOur second measure to compare immigrants housing position between four Nordic countriesis relative overcrowding. Table 10 shows figures for overcrowding measured as theproportion of residents living in dwellings with less than one room per person. The relativedifference between immigrants and the whole population is calculated as the percentage bywhich overcrowding for immigrants exceeds overcrowding for the whole population.The figures are not quite comparable. In Norway, the number of households is reducedwith single adults in one-room dwellings, but this has only a small effect on the comparisonbetween the countries.Table 10 shows that overcrowding among immigrants is much more common in Norwaythan in the other countries. Compared with the whole population, immigrants live five tosix times more often in overcrowded housing. Immigrants’ housing in Finland is alsoquite often overcrowded but this can partly be explained by a generally high degree ofovercrowding in the country. Immigrants’ level of overcrowding is close to the same levelTable 10. Proportion of immigrants and whole population living in densely populated housing ∗ inthe Nordic countries (%).Denmark Finland Norway SwedenWhole population 7 18 8 16Immigrants 28 41 45 26Relative difference % 289 128 463 61∗ More than one person per room (kitchen and bath excluded).Denmark:. Foreign-born persorns and their children 2008 16+ years. Database at the Danish Building ResearchInstitute based on data from Statistics Denmark.Finland: Data on households 31.12.2008, immigrants = households headed by a foreign-speaking person, Source:Statistics Finland.Norway: Source: Foreign-born persons and their children. Age 16—70 years. Statistics Norway. Level of livingamong immigrants 2005/2006. Survey to a representative selection among 10 groups. Level of living in the wholepopulation 2007. Single adults in one-room dwellings excluded.Sweden: Foreign–born persons 16+ years. Statistic Sweden, Survey on living conditions 2007.
16 H. Skifter Andersen et al.in Denmark and Sweden. However, because the population in Denmark in general livesmore seldom in overcrowded dwellings, the difference between immigrants and the wholepopulation is much greater than in Sweden. It can therefore be concluded that immigrants’housing situation, with respect to overcrowding, differs most from that of the population asa whole in Norway followed, in decreasing order, by Denmark, Finland and Sweden.Downloaded by [Norsk Institutt for By og] at 07:07 11 March 2013ConclusionsWe have shown that the housing situation of immigrants in the four Nordic countriesdiffers a great deal. It is also documented that differences in immigrants’ position in thehousing market cannot be explained by differences between the countries with respect toimmigration and general income inequalities alone. This indicates that elements of housingpolicies may have special effects for the housing situation of immigrants.The evidence presented in this article identifies important differences between thefour countries regarding immigrants’ distribution on tenures in the housing markets. Theanalysis shows that immigrants in Finland are most unequally distributed between tenures,measured by our index of tenure segmentation, while immigrants in Norway are the leastsegmented. Denmark and Sweden are positioned somewhere in between, with the strongestsegmentation in Denmark.Norway differs in particular by having a larger proportion of immigrants living inowner-occupied housing than in the other countries. Compared with the whole population,immigrants are less often homeowners in Finland than in Denmark and Sweden.In Denmark and Finland, a large proportion of immigrants lives in social/publichousing, while the share is very low in Norway due to its small social/publichousing sector. Compared with the whole population, Finland has the largest overrepresentationof immigrants in social/public housing, followed by Norway andDenmark which are at the same level. The lowest level of over-representation is foundin Sweden. Private renting is an important sector for immigrants in all the countries. Butimmigrants have the easiest access to private renting in Finland and Sweden. Especiallyin Denmark, immigrants do not very often live in private renting and less often livein this tenure than what would be anticipated given their lower incomes. Cooperativesare an important sector for immigrants in Sweden and Norway. This is not the case inDenmark where immigrants live less often than the average in cooperatives, and areunder-represented; especially when one considers their lower incomes.This paper shows large differences in immigrants’ housing situation measured by degreeof overcrowding. The drawback of the Norwegian housing system is that immigrants moreoften live in overcrowded dwellings than in the other countries. In Norway and Finland avery high proportion of immigrants live in overcrowded dwellings compared with Denmarkand Sweden. But overcrowding in general differs between the countries and the picture issomewhat different if one looks at how immigrants’ housing situation differs from that ofthe whole population. The gap between immigrants and the whole population is largest inNorway. It is also quite large in Denmark and lowest in respectively Finland andSweden.If tenures are strongly divided into housing for the rich and poor, immigrants to alarge extent will be concentrated in housing for the poor. We examined whether the variationsin housing outcomes for immigrants among the four countries can be explained bydifferences in income inequalities and income segmentation in the housing systems. Thehousing outcomes for different income groups vary a great deal between the countries withrespect to segmentation and overcrowding. But, when one compares the countries, there
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