Birds of a Feather Flock Together, but What About Fledglings? Observational Census as a Method to Investigate Spatial, Temporal, Generational, and Gendered Dimensions of Microecological Segregation

There is a lack of research-based knowledge of the conditions in which, in supposedly integrated settings, segregation prevails in people’s everyday lives. An important task for research in the field, therefore, is to develop methods that consider the intersection of temporal, spatial, gender, and generational factors at play in everyday racial contact and segregation. This study had a twofold aim: first, to showcase the method of observational census—a way of documenting vast amounts of instances of naturally occurring behavior—for studying microecological contact and segregation, and second, to shed light on real-life microecological segregation in a capital city in Northern Europe. Through a series of regression and latent class analyses of a dataset comprised of observations of interracial contact and segregation in 6,444 groups, we identified different types of groups and present their spatial and temporal distributions across the city. We show that racial heterogeneity was more common in groups in the city’s statistically most diverse areas in terms of residential segregation, among younger rather than older groups, in mixed-gender groups, and that there were gender-related differences in terms of the groups’ racial heterogeneity. We conclude that despite its limitations, the method of observational census provides a unique opportunity to examine people’s engagement in intergroup contact in their everyday lives. Future research should optimize its potential by combining it with other types of methods.