Misalignment between residential segregation of non-EU migrants and urban barriers varies across Western European cities

Previous research has shown that residential segregation often aligns with urban fragmentation in contexts where explicit segregation policies were historically implemented. However, it remains unclear whether this alignment also emerges in contemporary urban contexts where segregation is driven by market mechanisms and residential preferences. Here we analyze 520 cities across eight Western European countries using high-resolution demographic data and a Monte Carlo approach to test whether residential segregation of non-EU migrants aligns with urban fragmentation by railways, motorways, and waterways. We find that the relationship between residential segregation and urban fragmentation is highly heterogeneous across Europe. Rather than a uniform trend, our results reveal regional divergence: while the Netherlands and Germany exhibit a significant alignment, Spain, the United Kingdom, and Italy show less alignment than expected by chance. These findings suggest that urban barriers do not generally function as social frontiers in European contexts, with country-specific urban development potentially influencing the observed regional differences.