Aaron Lauterbach
Aaron Lauterbach is a third-year PhD candidate at Western Sydney University. Originally from Germany, he holds degrees in psychology and political science from the University of Leipzig, Humboldt University of Berlin, and the University of Freiburg. His research examines intergroup relations in urban settings, with a particular focus on the motivational and environmental factors that shape whether people seek or avoid encounters across ethnic divides. Before beginning his PhD, Aaron worked at the German Centre for Integration and Migration Research and the Berlin Social Science Centre. His current work combines social psychological theory, survey methods, and GPS-derived mobility data, and has been recognised through a Fellowship from the Australian Consortium for Social and Political Research.
Session
Segregation is conventionally measured from residential census data, which captures where people sleep rather than where they spend their days. Far less is known about segregation in activity spaces: where people travel, how long they stay, and the ethnic composition of the places they move through. Even in highly diverse cities, everyday mobility tends to follow stable, habitual routines that may quietly reproduce informal segregation. Integrating human geography, social psychology and the habit-rupture model of intergroup contact (Paolini et al., 2026), this study asks how mobility choices shape people’s sustained exposure to diversity in Greater Sydney.
Drawing on a sample of 500 adults from majority and minority backgrounds across five neighbourhood types varying systematically in ethnic diversity, we combine three-month smartphone-based GPS tracking with psychological assessments and egocentric network surveys. We examine whether GPS-derived mobility trajectories across ethnically diverse versus homogeneous urban spaces align with participants’ attitudes towards interethnic contact and their everyday intergroup experiences.
This paper presents first results from the GPS component, mapping participants’ activity spaces and describing their exposure to neighbourhoods of differing ethnic composition beyond their home area. We then outline the planned analytic strategy. Latent-class analyses will identify typologies linking psychological dispositions, social network composition and navigation behaviour. Life events before and during tracking are recorded to separate habitual from rupture periods and to estimate how transitions reshape spatial practices.
By situating human mobility within individual dispositions, environmental constraints, habits and life transitions, the study aims to advance understanding of when and why people sustain or depart from segregated routines, illuminating the behavioural foundations of intergroup contact in everyday settings.