Bonds and barriers: Ethnic partnering patterns in Sweden

Ingroup partnering (endogamy) is a crucial strategy for immigrant groups to access bonding social capital, whereas outgroup partnering (exogamy) is vital for bridging social capital, facilitating opportunities and networks. We ask whether endogamy decreases with the exposure to the majority society in two dimensions: time and space. This is done for Sweden, with a large and ethnically diverse population. We focus on first unions of those who immigrated as children or were born in Sweden to immigrant parents, eliminating the confounding effects of pre-migration partnerships. Using population register data (n=900,000) covering both marriages and consensual unions we find high ethnic ingroup partnering, particularly among those from the Middle East and Africa – rates of endogamy at country level being 40–60% in several origin groups, while widening the scope to regional levels raises these figures to 60–80%. In the same groups, partnering with someone of majority origin is rare. We find evidence of declining endogamy with time exposure, measured as the years the family has been in Sweden, but while the trend is fairly systematic it still leaves very high levels of endogamy in several groups. We do not find much evidence, however, that spatial segregation is an important driver behind endogamy. Ingroup partnering is sustained even when very few compatriots are available in the neighbourhood – possibly an effect of online meeting opportunities. Culturally attracting and/or repelling mechanisms are likely to be substantially more decisive than the opportunity structure for partner choice.