Residential segregation in new Hispanic destinations: Cities, suburbs, and rural communities compared

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Abstract

This paper provides new estimates of Hispanic–white residential segregation in new destinations and established Hispanic places. New Hispanic destinations are defined broadly to include metropolitan cities, suburban places, and rural communities with unusually rapid Hispanic growth rates. The analysis is framed with the spatial assimilation and place stratification perspectives and is based on block data from the 1990 and 2000 decennial censuses. The analysis confirms our basic hypothesis – that Hispanics are highly segregated in new Hispanic destinations, often at levels greatly exceeding those in established places. Hispanic suburbanization or exurbanization into new destinations is no marker of spatial assimilation. Consistent with the place stratification perspective, differences in Hispanic–white segregation between new destinations and established Hispanic areas cannot be explained by place-to-place differences in ecological location, population composition, economic growth, employment, or Hispanic–white income inequality. Hispanic segregation in new destinations is especially sensitive to the size of the foreign-born population and to preexisting “minority threats” in communities with large black populations. Segregation levels in new destinations also are less responsive to income disparities between Hispanics and whites; economic assimilation does not insure Hispanic spatial assimilation. Understanding how newcomers are spatially incorporated in new destinations will be a continuing challenge for scholars concerned about the spatial diffusion and apparent geographic balkanization of America’s growing Hispanic population.

Introduction

America’s Hispanic population is on the move. One-third of recent Mexican immigrants to the United States (i.e., between 1995 and 2000) settled outside of traditional gateway states in the Southwest (Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California). This represents a remarkable break from the past. During 1975–80 and 1985–90, only 9 and 13 percent of Hispanic immigrants, respectively, settled outside of traditional gateway states (Durand et al., 2005, Leach and Bean, 2008). Big cities like Atlanta and Washington, DC, as well as many smaller metropolitan cities (e.g., Winston-Salem or Reno), are now magnets for Hispanics and other immigrant populations (McConnell, 2008). But perhaps more significantly, 51 percent of Hispanic immigrants in new gateway states live in small suburban places, and 21 percent live in rural towns (Kandel and Parrado, 2005, Singer, 2004). To be sure, the rapid growth of Hispanics has transformed the social and economic fabric of many new destination communities, where they have come to live and work – often at low wages – in meat processing plants, agriculture, construction, landscaping, and the service industry (Hirschman and Massey, 2008).

In this paper, we ask a straightforward but heretofore unanswered question about the spatial assimilation or incorporation of Hispanic populations in new destinations. That is, has the growing racial and cultural diversity in new Hispanic destinations been accompanied by more racial segregation? Or, instead, has the new in-migration led to the emergence of racially integrated places, where Hispanics and whites live together in the same neighborhoods? Our study bridges a large residential segregation literature with new research on emerging Hispanic destinations and provides empirical evidence of changing ethnic relations between whites and America’s new immigrant groups. Here, we use data from the 1990 and 2000 decennial censuses to identify new Hispanic destinations, defined broadly to include metropolitan cities, suburban communities, and rural towns with unusually rapid growth in the Hispanic population. We then compare – for the first time – patterns of Hispanic–white segregation in new destinations with established places having sizeable and longstanding Hispanic populations (located mostly in the American Southwest). We also estimate several multivariate regression models, drawn from previous ecological studies of metropolitan segregation (e.g., Logan et al., 2004), that identify significant correlates of place-to-place variation in Hispanic–white segregation in new Hispanic destinations and established places. Our baseline estimates of segregation address longstanding questions about ongoing demographic processes of spatial assimilation or place stratification (e.g., Iceland and Nelson, 2008, Waters and Jiménez, 2005).

Section snippets

National estimates of Hispanic segregation

Neighborhood residential segregation has been used as an indirect measure of social distance between different racial and ethnic groups (Park, 1926, Taeuber and Taeuber, 1965). Recent studies provide a rather mixed view of changing relations between Hispanics and whites, despite the optimism implied by accelerated Hispanic suburbanization in the nation’s largest metropolitan areas during the 1980s and 1990s (Charles, 2003). Logan et al. (2004), for example, found that the 1990s brought

Data

Data come from the 100 percent items of the 1990 and 2000 decennial census summary files. We identify residential segregation patterns in rapidly growing Hispanic places rather than in metropolitan or micropolitan statistical areas.

A profile of new Hispanic destinations and established places

The results in Table 1 provide a sociodemographic profile of new Hispanic destinations in 2000. New destinations have much smaller populations on average in 2000 than established Hispanic communities. For example, the average population in new destinations was 16,800, compared with 40,588 and 27,990 in established and other places, respectively. Not surprisingly, new destinations also had much smaller Hispanic populations (1666) on average than established places (16,697).

By definition, new

Discussion and conclusion

The past decade has ushered in new patterns of population redistribution and growth among America’s Hispanic population (Massey and Capoferro, 2008, McConnell, 2008). Hispanics have become much less spatially concentrated in the Southwest and large metropolitan cities (Leach and Bean, 2008). Increasingly, Hispanics are relocating to nontraditional destinations, including suburban places and small towns in the Midwest and South (Donato et al., 2007, Singer, 2004). Whether indigenous populations

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