Residential concentration of non-national population subgroups and potential socioeconomic vulnerability in a southern Italian urban context

The spatial distribution of residential patterns has often been translated into profound and increasing segmentation of urban contexts, which frequently uncovered deep socioeconomic spatial inequalities. With modern cities as one of the main systems of stratification and fragmentation, the main aim of this article is to investigate the potential socioeconomic vulnerability and the spatial concentration of non-nationals in the city of Bari at the time of the last Census (2021) applying spatial methods to census trats as units of analyses and considering the top five foreign-nationality population subgroups there residing (Georgians, Bangladeshis, Albanians, Romanians and Chinese). Our results show that suburban areas in the city where the potential socioeconomic vulnerability is higher are not necessarily those in which groups non-nationals are over-represented, but interesting differences regarding specific groups of non-nationals emerge. Also, the territorial concentration of non-nationals respect to Italian residents tend to diverge not only across the space but also among subgroups of non-nationals. These findings might be relevant to inform knowledge-based policies dealing with the urban space, particularly those dealing with the distribution of socioeconomic vulnerability and ethnic concentration within and across the neighborhoods of the city.