Ethnic Differences in Activity Spaces: A Study of Out-of-Home Nonemployment Activities with Mobile Phone Data

The need to examine the entire scope of everyday activities of individuals in segregation studies has recently been recognized by social scientists and policy makers. To bring forth new insights into ethnic segregation through investigating the activities and movement undertaken by different population groups, we used mobile phone positioning data to compare the activity spaces of out-of-home nonemployment activities over a one-year period in Estonia and abroad. The results show that ethnicity has a significant influence on the activity spaces of individuals. The biggest differences between the two population groups occur in Estonia outside the respondents’ home city of Tallinn, where the Russian-speaking minority was found to visit 45 percent fewer districts than Estonians. Moreover, they exhibit a preference for districts that are more heavily populated by a Russian-speaking population. With respect to international travel, the Russian-speaking minority visits fewer countries and are 3.6 times more likely to visit former Soviet Union countries than Estonians. The activity spaces of out-of-home nonemployment activities have fewer differences between the two groups in the respondents’ home city of Tallinn. Overall, our results show that ethnic differences have less effect on the everyday activity space and a greater influence on the choices made regarding long-distance travel.