Introduction

In 2019, the UK media reported the case of a housing development in London where a communal recreational area had been provided but the children living in rented social housing were prevented from accessing it and playing with the children of homeowners (Grant and Michael 2019). This is one of an accumulation of cases of proactive segregation and speaks to ‘poor doors’ architecture, whereby housing developers in London construct different entrances into an apartment building for those who rent and those who own, along with different postal delivery and waste disposal services (Osborne 2014, Wall and Osborne 2018). Permission to build currently requires plans for affordable housing, but it seems that housing developers operate on the basis that purchasers of high value properties in the same complex do not want to mix with such people. This is one example of how property rights are used to inscribe entitlements to certain bodies, and how sectarian divides are constructed and secured based on notions of superiority of one type of human over another inferior type. While communal mixing with the sharing of common services has increased in the UK, a worrying feature is that ‘segregation is increasing in a number of very particular respects in the UK, especially the growing isolation of the White majority from minorities in urban zones’ (Kaufmann and Cantle 2016: NP).

The segregation that is experienced by children who are enabled or prevented from living and playing together is also evident in how they access and benefit from education services. Proactive legal separation is a sustained education policy strategy of successive UK governments in England and across the globe. For example, children are divided on the basis of school place provider and parental choice into fee charging and taxpayer provided schools, and/or boys’ and girls’ schools, and/or faith or secular schools, and/or academic and vocational schools (Gunter 2020b). In addition, segregation is co-produced through how structural advantage and disadvantage operate in everyday decisions, practices, and market exchanges (van Zanten et al 2015), and while it may be unlawful to discriminate on the basis of race, evidence shows it is a resilient feature (Coughlan 2015; Meatto 2019).