JOBNAME: No Job Name PAGE: 1 SESS: 9 OUTPUT: Thu Jul 25 16:37:44 2013 /Xpp84/wiley_journal/AREA/area_v0_i0/area_12054 The segregation of educated youth and dynamic geographies of studentification Darren P Smith* and Phil Hubbard** *Department of Geography, Loughborough University, Loughborough, Leicestershire LE11 3TU Email: d.p.smith@lboro.ac.uk **School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research, University of Kent, Chatham Maritime, Kent ME4 4AG Revised manuscript received 6 June 2013 This paper explores how university students are enmeshed in the trend of increasing sociospatial segregation. The paper charts the unprecedented in-migration of students into selected towns and cities as part of the expansion of UK higher education in the mid-1990s, epitomised by single people living in multi-person shared private rented housing, often alongside established households in socially-mixed neighbourhoods. It is shown that student populations became more spatially concentrated during mid-2000s with the development of purpose-built accommodation, predominantly in the form of gated ‘student-enclaves’. We argue that these exclusionary, ‘student-only’ spaces are becoming more wide- spread due to concurrent trends in the commodification of student housing and studenthood, which are encouraging the formation of ‘new frontiers of student segregation’.The paper ends by discussing these trends, arguing for further research exploring the variegated spatial outcomes of these processes of segregation. Key words: higher education, social mixing, students, neighbourhood change, exclusion Introduction Contrary to the aspirations of UK national policy to foster socially mixed communities (Lees 2009), geographic studies regularly conclude that sociospatial segregation is becoming more entrenched along many axes of social difference (Dorling et al. 2008). The formation of exclu- sionary social geographies that separate and divide sub- populations into neighbourhoods that are (re)produced as the preserve of a particular social group (Savage 2010) accordingly has crucial implications for community cohe- sion, (non)belonging and identity (Johnston et al. 2008). Our aim in this paper is to explore how university students are embroiled in these wider trends. To date, student populations have been largely overlooked within studies of social segregation, despite scholarship suggest- ing students gravitate towards particular neighbourhoods to maintain distinct lifestyles, identities and practices (Munro et al. 2009), and partly because they are pushed towards those neighbourhoods by the activities of univer- sity accommodation officers, letting agents, landlords and other institutional actors (Chatterton 2010a). Conceptu- ally, it is important to relate trends in the supply-side economy that provides accommodation for students to putative shifts in student lifestyle and ‘culture’. To consider these links, we provide an overview of the main ways that student housing markets have been restructured since the 1990s. The paper proceeds through four sections. The next section briefly reviews scholar- ship on student housing to trace the emergence of ‘studentification’, beginning with the expansion of student populations in socially mixed neighbourhoods before an apparent ‘tipping point’ was reached and student enclaves emerged in a range of towns and cities. We evidence this by undertaking the first analyses of students in private rented housing using 2001 GB census data. The second section examines the emergence of a more distinct spatial segregation of students via new-build, ‘student-only’ developments. The third section discusses the impacts of the recent recessionary trends in student accommodation, drawing on data from content analyses of previously unreviewed annual student housing reports of the four leading commercial research organisations in the UK, to tease out changes in the production and consumption of student housing between 2007 and 2011. The final section presents findings from systematic analyses of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 Area (2013) doi: 10.1111/area.12054 Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited Journal Code: AREA Proofreader: Mony Article No: AREA12054 Delivery date: 25 Jul 2013 Page Extent: 9 Area 2013 © 2013 Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)