Same-sex marriage and neighbourhood landscape overlap—A revised understanding of the spatial distribution of gay men and lesbians

Abstract

Obstacles to family formation have been removed in many countries outside of the Anglophone world for quite some time. Conventional knowledge suggests that this phenomenon should make gay men and lesbians more similar to the general population. In this study, however, we show that differences linger. By classifying Swedish neighbourhoods into multiscalar neighbourhood landscapes, we show that same-sex married individuals differ from both married individuals and the general population. Same-sex married individuals are concentrated in cores in metropolitan cities characterised by the ownership tenure form and apartment buildings. In general, same-sex individuals avoid remote rural areas, but same-sex females are quite present in rural towns. Same-sex males are concentrated to areas that border deprived areas but not to deprived areas. These results suggest that there is a need to move beyond legal agendas and consider what drives the residential mobility of the gay and lesbian population.