The effect of social mobility on the odds and destination of relocation: moving within or out of the Brussels-Capital Region

Despite being the wealthiest region of Belgium, the Brussels-Capital Region (BCR) is marked by widening social inequalities, resulting in a distinct pattern of socioeconomic segregation. This spatial division is reinforced through both selective migration and the process of class reproduction. It has been illustrated thoroughly that both processes are strongly determined by one’s educational attainment. This study reveals how educational attainment and the subsequent (lack off) opportunities for social upward mobility have an effect on people’s residential mobility and thus on the composition of the neighbourhood population. Analyses are drawn on the exhaustive and anonymous data from the Belgian censuses of 1991 and 2001, individually linked to the National Population Register (situation in 2006) to observe internal migration. First, binary logistic regression illustrates how social mobility is significantly related to the probability of moving: the odds are higher for socially immobile or downward mobile individuals than for the ones who climb up the social ladder. Second, the effect of social mobility on the direction of the observed relocation is elucidated through multinomial logistic regression.