High concentrations of immigrants in segregated city areas represent a major challenge to integration in Europe and Norway. Segregation and radicalization is typically considered as possible consequences of such a development. In addition, a better geographical diversification of immigrants would also lead to a more favorable development in rural areas. With this as backdrop, the paper examines push and pull factors within rural municipalities for non-western immigrants. The study used register data from SSB and IMDi, which were used to build a panel data set with observations from 2004 to 2015. The unbalanced data set was analyzed using a fixed effects model that included net immigration, labour market, political governance, financial situation and the number of immigrants granted residence. The results show that a larger share of the population in densely populated areas is related to a higher percentage of non-western immigrants, while a higher population relates to a lower share of non-western immigrants. We found a negative relationship between the municipalities’ financial situation and the concentration of non-western immigrants, but there seems to be no connection between non-western immigrants and higher spending on primary school and culture. Municipalities with a mayor from Senterpartiet experienced a decreased percentage of non-western immigrants, compared to municipalities with mayors from Arbeiderpartiet. At the same time, we saw no significant relationship between the share of non-western immigrants and mayors from the other parties compared to mayors from Arbeiderpartiet.
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