Segregation discovery in a social network of companies

We introduce a framework for the data-driven analysis of social segregation of minority groups, and challenge it on a complex scenario. The framework builds on quantitative measures of segregation, called segregation indexes, proposed in the social science literature. The segregation discovery problem is introduced, which consists of searching sub-groups of population and minorities for which a segregation index is above a minimum threshold. A search algorithm is devised that solves the segregation problem by computing a multi-dimensional data cube that can be explored by the analyst. The machinery underlying the search algorithm relies on frequent itemset mining concepts and tools. The framework is challenged on a cases study in the context of company networks. We analyse segregation on the grounds of sex and age for directors in the boards of the Italian companies. The network includes 2.15M companies and 3.63M directors.