Hostile integration pressure makes voluntary self-segregation preferable for lower-status groups.

Evidence

I do not mean to suggest here that segregation is an innate and therefore inevitable human tendency. It is surely true that among lower-status persons segregation is more likely to be imposed than preferred. Nevertheless, as recent attempts at school and neighborhood racial integration in the United States have demonstrated, the higher-status group can make life so uncomfortable for the “integrator” that being with one’s own—however despised one’s own may be—becomes psychologically preferable. — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 1130

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to the reader’s analytic thread: this describes how discomfort in public space produces psycho-social withdrawal—a mechanism parallel to civil inattention hardening into detachment in Cole’s observer. Connects to why individuals retreat into known categories rather than engage difference.