Neighbourhood Demographic Quotas and Limits of the Right to Sort

This article offers a normative defence of using neighbourhood demographic quotas to deconcentrate residential clusters of advantage. It develops the case by detailing problems of inequality that arise from this kind of sorting and sketching several ways to implement quotas in residential areas. Then it challenges several objections that might support advantaged individuals establishing or maintaining sorted neighbourhoods. It does this by conceptualising a ‘right to sort’ and critically investigating possible bases for it grounded in concerns regarding residential choice, freedom of association, located life plans, and non-discrimination. It furthers its defence of limiting the rights of advantaged individuals to sort by relating the discussion to ideas about the weight of certain moral claims varying in accordance with individuals’ broader circumstances in recent thinking on the relationship between domains of morality and principles of transitional justice.