First the mixture and then what? Community participation and neighbourhood integration in mixed neighbourhoods in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and New Haven, USA

Two mixed neighbourhoods in ordinary cities are used as examples in this paper to, first, show what as the outline for the session argues is confirmed empirically by others as well, namely that the social networks of the residents are not living up to the ideal of policy makers of residential mixture producing mixed social networks. While hence mixture may not bring about the individual access to new resources that many have wished for, this paper asks whether on the level of the neighbourhood, indicators can be found that mixture brings about resource access to the community that would not be available otherwise. It analyzes, first, to what extent community and political participation depends on network ties mixed in race, ethnicity and class: are those who have such mixed ties more likely to participate, and do they more often participate through these ties? Showing that this effect is not very strong, the paper then turns to the question of possible explanations, referring o qualitative, ethnographic data. Refuting the homophily thesis as a description of what is there, not an explanation, the paper suggests, using Feld’s concept of foci and Small’s idea of unanticipated gains, that for anything productive to happen when neighbourhoods are, and remain, mixed, policy makers may want to rethink their notion of integration.