Housing, Entitlments and Social Exclusion: the Case of Immigrants in Milan

In this paper the housing market of the immigrants district in Milan is analysed: particular attention is devoted to the relation between housing price and immigrants concentration. The aim is twofold: to observe how the housing market affects the immigrants settlement inside the urban space; to establish how this urban settlement affects the urban social life of immigrants, that is if it offers a very social integration or it maintains the social exclusion condition. We will use the Sen's concept of entitlements to study the competitive capability of agents in the housing market. Particular attention will be paid to individuals capability to convert economic, social and political resources in human functionings. This viewpoint is effective in order to analyse specificity of individuals: the traditional housing policies are discussed with respect to the opportunity of immigrants to modify their life style given the strong disadvantages they suffer. Empirical analysis demonstrates that housing problems and social exclusion are interrelated and that policies devoted to increase the housing supply are not able to solve problems affecting ethnical minorities. When housing poverty and social exclusion are considered elements of the same problem and social and economic phenomena are not separated, we will observe that traditional analytical frameworks of policies are definitively insufficient. Some final suggestions on political interventions will be proposed.