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Theoretical Perspectives on the Immigration-Crime Relationship
... It would also be instructive to more closely examine the effects of poverty and experiences of anti-immigrant discrimination on ethnic minority work values. Research on segmented assimilation has shown that life in economically deprived neighbourhoods alongside exposure to discrimination often leads disaffected minority youths to develop reactive ethnic identities and/or deviant cultural norms and values (Portes et al. 2009;Kubrin and Mioduszewski 2018). In fact, research by have found that low hourly wages, low by-weekly earnings, and experiences of unemployment are each predictive of lower extrinsic work values among American youths. ...
Despite the increasingly diverse ethnic composition of the British labor force, there is no research investigating whether ethnic minorities have different work values from the White British demographic (White British). Using nationally representative data (2012-2013), this article fills this gap by comparing extrinsic and intrinsic work values between White British and five ethnic minorities, while distinguishing between first and second generations. The results show that both first-and second-generation minorities have stronger extrinsic work values than White British, but the ethnic differences are more pronounced for the second generations. Compared to White British, while first-generation minorities have weaker intrinsic work values, the second generations have stronger intrinsic work values. Differences in extrinsic work values are partly explained by differences in age, education and income, while differences in intrinsic work values are largely explained by age, education and job autonomy. These results hold significant implications for understanding the career choices of ethnic minorities and labor market outcomes.
... 6 This viewpoint is underscored by criminological theories, which have "mixed expectations about the connection of immigration to crime" (Gottfredson and Hirschi 2020:163; see also pgs. 167-169; for a review of these theories, see Kubrin and Mioduszewski 2018;Ousey and Kubrin 2018:66-68). ...
In 2017, California officially became a sanctuary state following the passage of Senate Bill 54, which limits state and local police cooperation with federal immigration authorities. Following the passage of SB54, critics worried that crime rates would rise. What impact did this policy have on crime in California? The current study, the first of its kind, addresses this question. Using a state-level panel containing violent and property offenses from 1970 through 2018, we employ a synthetic control group design to approximate California’s crime rates had SB54 not been enacted. We interpret the gap between California’s 2018 crime rate and its synthetic counterfactual as SB54’s impact. Results show that SB54’s impact on violent and property crime is neither robust nor sufficiently large to rule out a null effect. Sensitivity analyses buttress this finding. We discuss the implications of the findings for crime policy in the U.S.
This chapter reviews theories on the immigration–crime link, some macro-level, some micro-level, including those that pose a positive relationship between immigration and crime as well as those that pose a negative relationship between immigration and crime.
With some 460 languages spoken across the land, the United States has a deep reservoir of linguistic diversity. But our nation's inconsistent language-learning policies and practices present a variety of obstacles for learning English. Understanding and then addressing student needs during the critical transition phase for newcomer students is an important area for intervention. The shared fortunes of immigrant and native citizens alike will be tied to successfully linking our youngest new Americans to the educational and economic opportunity structure, to civic belonging, and full democratic participation.
We examine the city-level relationship between income inequality, family disruption, and rates of violent crime among blacks
by viewing communities as units of both stratification and social control The former emphasizes socioeconomic variables, such
as inequality, while the latter stresses social disorganization variables such as family disruption as determinants of violent
crime. We find that income stratification within black communities (black-to-black inequality) has a strong positive effect
on the rates of black violence, but the effect is indirect; income inequality increases family disruption, which elevates
the rates of black violence. We argue that using a racially bounded indicator of income inequality has greater theoretical
parsimony than using a measure of racial inequality (white-to-black) or overall (total) inequality. The failure in previous
research both to employ theoretically appropriate measures of income inequality and to consider indirect as well as direct
effects of inequality may explain why the evidence of a relationship between inequality and crime has been weak in previous
studies.
This study examines the relationship between ethnicity, acculturation, and crime among a sample of Hispanic adolescents drawn from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN) dataset. Prior research has shown that Hispanics who are more acculturated are more likely to engage in crime, but there is a lack of empirical evidence to explain why this is, and little research that has explored Hispanics relative to one another. In an effort to address these shortcomings, this study explores the impact of ethnicity on criminal offending among Hispanic adolescents. This study also examines whether acculturation, net of ethnicity, predicts criminal offending among this group. Using longitudinal data from the PHDCN, we assess the independent effects of ethnicity and generational status, as well as additional criminological variables on adolescent criminal offending. Findings indicated that, on average, Mexican adolescents were less likely than other Hispanics to report violent offending while Puerto Ricans were significantly more likely to report violent offending. No differences were observed between Hispanic subgroups with respect to property offending. Results from negative binomial regression revealed that ethnicity is rendered insignificant in multivariate analyses. Consistent with prior research, first generation immigrants were significantly less likely to engage in delinquent behavior, even after controlling for relevant criminological variables.
Sociological studies of crime have rarely examined the effects of immigration on aggregate patterns of violent offending, and particularly few studies have examined this relationship across multiple racial/ethnic populations. The current study extends research on immigration and crime by examining this relationship across total and race/ ethnicity-disaggregated populations (i.e., White, Black, and Latino) and for homicide offending (rather than homicide victimization) using 1999-2001 arrest data drawn from 328 census places in California. Findings reveal that immigrant concentration has trivial (nonsignificant) effects on overall homicides and Latino homicides, but slightly reduces White and Black homicide offending, net of controls. Implications of these findings are as follows: (a) Immigration does not have violence-generating effects but instead appears to have violence-neutral or perhaps some violence-reducing effects on homicide offending, and (b) This small or null effect is fairly consistent across racial/ ethnic populations.
The myth of the criminal immigrant has permeated public and political debate for much of this nation's history and persists despite growing evidence to the contrary. Crime concerns are increasingly aimed at the indirect impact of immigration on crime highlighting the criminal pursuits of the children of immigrants. Adding to extant knowledge on the immigration-crime nexus, this research asks whether immigrants are differentially involved in crime by examining immigrant offending histories (prevalence, frequency, seriousness, persistence, and desistance) from early adolescence to young adulthood. Particular attention is afforded to the influence of various sources of heterogeneity including: generational and nativity status, and crime type. Results suggest that the myth remains; trajectory analyses reveal that immigrants are no more crime-prone than the native-born. Foreign-born individuals exhibit remarkably low levels of involvement in crime across their life course. Moreover, it appears that by the second generation, immigrants have simply caught up to their native-born counterparts in respect to their offending. Implications of the findings for theory and future research are discussed.
Research on immigration and crime has only recently started to consider potential heterogeneity in longitudinal patterns of immigrant offending. Guided by segmented assimilation and life course criminology frameworks, this article advances prior research on the immigration-crime nexus in three ways: using a large sample of high-risk adjudicated youth containing first and second generation immigrants; examining longitudinal trajectories of official and self-reported offending; and merging segmented assimilation and life course theories to distinguish between offending patterns. Data come from the Pathways to Desistance study containing detailed offending and socio-demographic background information on 1,354 adolescents (13.6 % female; n = 1,061 native-born; n = 210 second generation immigrants; n = 83 first generation immigrants) as they transition to young adulthood (aged 14-17 at baseline). Over 84 months we observe whether patterns of offending, and the correlates that may distinguish them, operate differently across immigrant generations. Collectively, this study offers the first investigation of whether immigrants, conditioned on being adjudicated, are characterized by persistent offending. Results show that first generation immigrants are less likely to be involved in serious offending and to evidence persistence in offending, and appear to be on a path toward desistance much more quickly than their peers. Further, assimilation and neighborhood disadvantage operate in unique ways across generational status and relate to different offending styles. The findings show that the risk for persistent offending is greatest among those with high levels of assimilation who reside in disadvantaged contexts, particularly among the second generation youth in the sample.
Recent debate on the future of immigration policy in the United States has spawned much discussion on social costs and consequences for immigrants, such as employment, education, health care, and most notably, crime. Although recent Latino immigrants are often portrayed as outsiders in popular media, their successful acculturation into the American way of life may present more crime-related risk rather than less. This study examines arrest records for Latinos in two southwestern American cities to determine the extent to which Latino acculturation is related to arrests and convictions for both misdemeanors and felonies after controlling for certain legal and extra-legal factors. Results indicate that acculturation is consistently and positively associated with all four crime-related outcomes in this sample. Implications for policy and future research are discussed.
Contrary to popular opinion, scholarly research has documented that immigrant communities are some of the safest places around. Studies repeatedly find that immigrant concentration is either negatively associated with neighborhood crime rates or not related to crime at all. But are immigrant neighborhoods always safer places? How does the larger community context within which immigrant neighborhoods are situated condition the immigration-crime relationship? Building on the existing literature, this study examines the relationship between immigrant concentration and violent crime across neighborhoods in Los Angeles and Chicago—two cities with significant and diverse immigrant populations. Of particular interest is whether neighborhoods with high levels of immigrant concentration that are situated within larger immigrant communities are especially likely to enjoy reduced crime rates. This was found to be the case in Chicago but not in Los Angeles, where neighborhoods with greater levels of immigrant concentration experienced higher, not lower, violent crime rates when located within larger immigrant communities. We speculate on the various factors that may account for the divergent findings.
Using the General Social Survey, the authors analyze trends in socializing with neighbors and with friends outside the neighborhood from 1974 to 1996. Consistent with arguments about a declining attachment to neighborhood, results show a linear trend toward less socializing within the neighborhood and more outside it. In addition, the data suggest that people are increasingly specializing in either neighborhood or extra neighborhood social ties. However, the evidence for less neighborhood socializing is slight. Also, inconsistent with some claims about neighborhoods, only mild evidence suggests that socializing at the neighborhood level is becoming more selective of certain social groups.
In this article, the authors assess the still limited literature on domestic violence among immigrant women in major receiving countries so as to begin delineating a framework to explain how immigrant-specific factors exacerbate the already vulnerable position—as dictated by class, gender, and race—of immigrant women in domestic violence situations. First, a review of this scholarship shows that the incidence of domestic violence is not higher than it is in the native population but rather that the experiences of immigrant women in domestic violence situations are often exacerbated by their specific position as immigrants, such as limited host-language skills, isolation from and contact with family and community, lack of access to dignified jobs, uncertain legal statuses, and experiences with authorities in their origin countries. The authors then examine the various responses at the national and local community levels to this issue in receiving countries.
This article explores the way in which immigration status interacts with domestic violence/woman battering in the lives of immigrant women in multicultural societies such as the USA, Australia, Germany and Israel. It reviews the reasons immigrant women are particularly vulnerable to battering, and discusses the reasons they stay with the batterers, avoid reporting the abuse to law enforcement authorities, and under-utilise social services. The article concludes with the implications of these issues for criminal justice policy and research.
This study demonstrate that the empirical literature on the structural convariates of homicide rates contains inconsistent findings across different time periods and different geographical units. This apparent variance of findings may be due to statistical or methodological artifacts of particular studies, such as different time periods covered, units of analysis, samples, model specification, and problems of statistical analysis and inference. A baseline regression model using 11 structural covariates is estimated for cities, metropolitan areas, and states in 1960, 1970, and 1980. The empirical estimates of this model exhibit instability because of high levels of collinearity among several regressors. Principal components analysis is applied to simplify the dimensionally of the structural covariate space. Reestimation of the regression model then indicates that the apparent inconsistencies across time and social space are greatly reduced. The theoretical significance of the findings for substantive theor...
While research on ethnic enclaves has shown that workers employed in the enclave appear to enjoy at least some of the advantages associated with the primary sector, this "enclave effect" has not been adequately explained. In contrast to existing explanations that conceptualize the enclave as a special case of the primary sector, we emphasize the distinctive characteristics of ethnic economies, and explain the "enclave effect" using a single, consistent account of recruitment and skill acquisition processes in primary, secondary, and enclave labor markets. Unlike other sectors of the economy, the ethnic enclave is characterized by an external, informal training system that shapes the employment relationship and increases the availability and quality of information for workers and employers. We apply the concept to a case study of the New York garment industry.
Is the contemporary second generation on the road to the upward mobility and assimilation that in retrospect characterized the second generation of earlier immigrations? Or are the American economic context and the racial origins of today's immigration likely to result in a much less favorable future for the contemporary second generation? While several recent papers have argued for the latter position, we suspect they are too pessimistic. We briefly review the second generation upward mobility in the past and then turn to the crucial comparisons between past and present.
Post-1965 immigration to the United States has given rise to a vigorous literature focused on adult newcomers. There is, however, a growing new second generation whose prospects of adaptation cannot be gleaned from the experience of their parents or from that of children of European immigrants arriving at the turn of the century. We present data on the contemporary second generation and review the challenges that it confronts in seeking adaptation to American society. The concept of segmented assimilation is introduced to describe the diverse possible outcomes of this process of adaptation. The concept of modes of incorporation is used for developing a typology of vulnerability and resources affecting such outcomes. Empirical case studies illustrate the theory and highlight consequences of the different contextual situations facing today's second generation.
The connection between immigration and crime is one of the most
contentious topics in contemporary society. These discussions are not
new, as debates on the issue date back more than 100 years. A general
point on which both pro- and anti-immigration writers agree is that,
as we enter the new millennium, the latest wave of immigration is
likely to have a more important impact on society than any other
social issue. In this essay, we survey the vast body of theoretical and
empirical works on the relationship between immigration and crime
in 20th-century America. Throughout, we include new writings as
well as older, sometimes neglected works. We discuss three major
theoretical perspectives that have guided explanations of the immigration/
crime link: opportunity structure, cultural approaches, and
social disorganization. We also examine empirical studies of immigrant
involvement in crime. We conclude with a review of public
opinion about immigrants, especially as it relates to immigrants and
crime, and then provide original data on the connection between public
opinion and immigrant crime.
There are important reasons to believe that immigrants should be
involved in crime to a greater degree than native-born Americans. For
example, immigrants face acculturation and assimilation problems
that most natives do not, and immigrants tend to settle in disorganized neighborhoods characterized by structural characteristics often associated with crime, such as widespread poverty, ethnic heterogeneity, and a preponderance of young males. However, despite claims by pundits and writers that
high levels of “immigrant crime” are an unavoidable product of immigration, scholars rarely produce any systematic evidence of this recently reemerging social problem.
Although a host of reasons exists to expect that immigrants are high-crime
prone, the bulk of empirical studies conducted over the past century have
found that immigrants are typically underrepresented in criminal statistics.
There are some partial exceptions to this finding, but these appear to be
linked more to differences in structural conditions across urban areas where
immigrants settle rather than to the cultural traditions of the immigrant
groups. Local context is a central influence shaping the criminal involvement
of both immigrants and natives, but in many cases, compared with
native groups, immigrants seem better able to withstand crime-facilitating
conditions than native groups. In conclusion, this review suggests that native
groups would profit from a better understanding of how immigrant groups
faced with adverse social conditions maintain low rates of crime.
Objective. Despite the perceived relationship between immigration and crime, scholars have advanced largely contradictory images of the effects of Latino immigration to urban areas. The goal of this paper is to establish the link between the size of urban Latino immigrant populations and the frequency of specific types of Latino homicide victimization rates. Methods. This research examines data from the 1980 Supplemental Homicide Reports (SHR) and the 1980 decennial census. While these data might not represent a contemporary situation, they are the only reliable source of information from government statistics. Results. Ordinary least squares regression analysis provides some support for economic deprivation and social disorganization interpretations of violence; however, the role of immigration varies by homicide type (e.g., felony and acquaintance killings) and is limited. Conclusions. These findings stress the need for addressing the link between immigration, urban conditions, and types of Latino homicide victimization.
Understanding the complex relationship between immigration and crime was once a core concern of American sociology. Yet the extensive post-1965 wave of immigration to the United States has done little to rekindle scholarly interest in this topic, even as politicians and other public figures advocate public policies to restrict immigration as a means of preventing crime. Although both popular accounts and sociological theory predict that immigration should increase crime in areas where immigrants settle, this study of Miami, El Paso, and San Diego neighborhoods shows that, controlling for other influences, immigration generally does not increase levels of homicide among Latinos and African Americans. Our results not only challenge stereotypes of the "criminal immigrant" but also the core criminological notion that immigration, as a social process, disorganizes communities and increases crime.
Does the ethnic and immigrant composition of a community and existence of immigrant enclaves or barrios influence community level drug violence? This study explores the relationship between these and other factors in Miami and San Diego census tracts. We employ data about the distribution of Cubans, Central Americans, Haitians, Mexicans and Southeast Asians, controlling for social and economic influences of drug versus non-drug violence. We also analyze the impact of various waves of immigration and immigrant communities to understand the circumstances under which drug violence occurs or is limited at the census tract level. The findings lend some support to the positive and negative aspects of Portes and Rumbaut's (2001) segmented assimilation hypothesis in Miami and San Diego neighborhoods. The strength of this conclusion varies and is contingent upon ethnic composition, new versus old immigration, and the all-encompassing effects of economic deprivation. © 2004 by the Center for Migration Studies of New York. All rights reserved.
This critical case study assesses the utility of spatial analysis based on maps rather than statistics for evaluating a fundamental premise of the social disorganization perspective: that immigration and ethnic heterogeneity weaken social control and increase community levels of crime. We investigate the relationship between the most recent wave of immigration and community levels of black homicide in the northern part of the city of Miami, an area that has received a large number of recent arrivals from Haiti and contains an established African American community. While quantitative methods have been used to explore this issue as part of an ongoing city-wide analysis, the current focus is on visual representations of the immigration/homicide linkage in the subsection of the city where the theoretically important target populations of African Americans and Haitians reside. Key findings are consistent with previous quantitative analyses that have demonstrated that immigration is not generally associated with higher community levels of homicide. These results call into question basic tenets of the social disorganization perspective while lending support to the concentrated disadvantage and immigration revitalization perspectives.
Contemporary research on union formation in the United States largely focuses on how economic deprivation impinges upon union formation decisions by race. Union formation among specific Latino subgroups, particularly Mexican Americans, is relatively understudied. Mexican Americans are of special interest because they exhibit marriage behavior similar to that of non-Latino Whites, and have a relatively precarious economic existence. This directs attention to the normative foundations of marriage. Using the 1987-88 National Survey of Families and Households, this research examines normative beliefs about marriage and cohabitation among non-Latino Whites, Mexican Americans, and mainland Puerto Ricans. The results indicate that Mexican Americans tend to be more pronuptial than non-Latino Whites. They evaluate marriage more positively relative to singlehood, and marriage intentions significantly boost their approval of cohabitation. The former is particularly evident among the foreign born. Such differences cannot be explained fully by socioeconomic background or beliefs about nonmarital sex and childbearing. Puerto Ricans are least disapproving of cohabitation in the absence of plans to marry, primarily because of their beliefs about nonmarital sex and childbearing.
Recently, scholars examining the link between immigration and crime have proposed an “immigrant revitalization perspective,” wherein larger immigrant populations are associated with reduced violent crime in aggregate areas. However, research supporting this claim typically draws on findings from research on heavily Latino neighborhoods in “established destination cities” and rarely takes into account the massive dispersal of immigrants across the country at the end of the twentieth century. Using a representative sample of neighborhoods in large US cities, this project analyzes violent crime rates for 8,628 census tracts, divided by racial and ethnic composition, nested within 84 cities, classified by immigration history or “destination” status. Findings suggest that the immigrant revitalization process may be heavily contingent on neighborhood- and city-level context. Specifically, neighborhoods with relatively small and recent immigrant populations may rely on receptive contexts provided by established destinations to revitalization neighborhoods and contribute to lower violent crime rates.
Social scientists generally seek to explain welfare-related behaviors in terms of economic choice, social structural, or culture of poverty theories. Because such explanations incompletely account for nativity differences in public assistance receipt among those of Mexican origin, this paper draws upon the sociology of migration and culture literatures to develop alternative materialist-based cultural repertoire hypotheses to explain the welfare behaviors of Mexican immigrants. We argue that immigrants from Mexico arrive and work in the United States under circumstances fostering employment-based cultural repertoires that, compared with natives and other immigrant groups, encourage less welfare participation (in part because such repertoires lead to faster welfare exits) and more post-welfare employment, especially in states with relatively more generous welfare-policies. Using individual-level data predating Welfare Reform from multiple panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), merged with state-level information on welfare-benefit levels, we assess these ideas by examining immigrant-group differences in welfare receipt, retention, and transition to employment across locales with varying levels of welfare benefits. Overall, the results are consistent with the notion that cultural repertoires incline Mexican immigrants to utilize welfare not primarily to avoid work, cope with disadvantage, or perpetuate a culture of dependency, but rather mostly to minimize employment discontinuities. This result carries important theoretical and policy implications.
Social disorganization is the dominant framework linking neighborhood patterns of immigration to local rates of crime and violence despite inconsistent findings and evidence to the contrary. Using tract-level census data from 1970 to 1990 and Chicago homicide data from 1980 to 1995, this study explores whether and how the changing face of immigration is (un)related to homicide patterns within the contemporary urban environment. The results show that stable and consistent growth in foreign born is not associated with neighborhood trends in violence, whereas growth in recent arrivals occurs almost exclusively within the safest neighborhoods of the city. This research highlights the need to distinguish recent waves of immigrants/migrants from their historic counterparts.
Objectives
This study investigated the extent to which immigrant concentration is associated with reductions in neighborhood crime rates in the City of Los Angeles.
Methods
A potential outcomes model using two-stage least squares regression was estimated, where immigrant concentration levels in 1990 were used as an instrumental variable to predict immigrant concentration levels in 2000. The instrumental variables design was used to reduce selection bias in estimating the effect of immigrant concentration on changes in official crime rates between 2000 and 2005 for census tracts in the City of Los Angeles, holding constant other demographic variables and area-level fixed effects. Non-parametric smoothers were also employed in a two-stage least squares regression model to control for the potential influence of heterogeneity in immigrant concentration on changes in crime rates.
Results
The results indicate that greater predicted concentrations of immigrants in neighborhoods are linked to significant reductions in crime. The results are robust to a number of different model specifications.
Conclusions
The findings challenge traditional ecological perspectives that link immigrant settlement to higher rates of crime. Immigration settlement patterns appear to be associated with reducing the social burden of crime. Study conclusions are limited by the potential for omitted variables that may bias the observed relationship between immigrant concentration and neighborhood crime rates, and the use of only official crime data which may under report crimes committed against immigrants. Understanding whether immigrant concentration is an important dynamic of changing neighborhood patterns of crime outside Los Angeles will require replication with data from other U.S. cities.
In this article, the authors present an overview of the relationship between immigrant households and crime and violence, drawing on sociological and public health literature. They present a critique of popular culture perspectives on immigrant families and youth violence, showing that crime and violence outcomes are if anything better for youth in immigrant families than one would expect given the social disadvantages that many immigrant households find themselves living in. They examine the extent to which exposure to violence among immigrant youth is comparably lower than among nonimmigrants living in similar social contexts and the extent to which social control and social learning frameworks can account for the apparent lower prevalence of violence exposure among immigrant youth. Their analyses show a persistent lower rate of violence exposure for immigrant youth compared to similarly situated nonimmigrant youth—and that these differences are not meaningfully understood by observed social control or social learning mechanisms. The authors focus then on the apparent paradox of why youth living in immigrant households in relative disadvantage have lower violence exposure compared to nonimmigrants living in similar social contexts. The answers, they argue, can be viewed from an examination of the effects that living in poverty and underclass neighborhoods for generations has on nonimmigrants in American cities.
The authors report on the history and present status of the eight nationality minorities of "Yankee City." Indices of residential and occupational status have been determined for each group for successive periods since arrival; both indices show a steady rise with time. Indices of social class status could be directly determined only for the time of the study; the relation of this index to time since first migration (for the several groups) and to the generation of the individual (within each group) points to a steady rise here, too. This quantitative analysis is supplemented by a qualitative treatment which is then extended to the special topics of the family, church, language, school, and associations. Throughout this section of the book, the conceptualization and the interpretation are that of the two preceding volumes of the Yankee City Series (see
16: 3714, 3715). A final chapter discusses the general position of ethnic groups in American society. Through a classification of ethnic groups according to degree of racial and cultural divergence from the old American norm, and the generalization that racial divergence is of primary importance in this country, differential predictions are made about the degree of subordination, strength of cultural subsystem, time for assimilation, and ultimate position in American society, for each ethnic group. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
With few exceptions, recent investigations have found levels of criminal involvement to be lower among immigrants than among the native born. We extend this line of research by examining arrest data for native-born citizens, citizens born outside the United States, naturalized citizens, and noncitizens in Orange County (Orlando), Florida, for homicide, sexual assault, robbery, and aggravated assault. Arrest rates for noncitizens are generally lower than those for the native born and similar to those of naturalized and foreign-born citizens, but their sexual assault rate is the highest of the four groups. The concentration of immigrants has no significant impact on arrest rates for native- and foreign-born citizens at the census-tract level. Additional research is necessary to more fully understand the linkage between immigration and crime, but mounting evidence that the new immigrants to not contribute to elevated crime levels in urban areas should be an important component of policy discussions.
This article examines the role of community-level factors, including percentage immigrant, for Latino- and Black-specific homicides and suicides in Miami, Florida. Using medical examiner data for 1985-1995 violent deaths and 1990 Census data, this article examines the contexts under which ethnic-specific lethal violence occurs at the census tract level. The results indicate that immigrants are not disrupting communities or undermining social integration. Overall, the article illustrates the importance of considering immigration for understanding race- and ethnic-specific lethal violence as well as the utility of examining the community contexts in which both homicide and suicide tend to occur.
Family researchers and policy makers are giving increasing attention to the consequences of immigration for families. Immigration affects the lives of family members who migrate as well as those who remain behind and has important consequences for family formation, kinship ties, living arrangements, and children's outcomes. We present a selective review of the literature on immigrant families in the United States, focusing on key research themes and needs. A summary of secondary data sets that can be used to study immigrant families is presented as well as suggestions for future research in this increasingly important area of family research and policy.
This article first gives attention to the ongoing debate about the role of remittances on development. The author presents evidence showing that monetary transfers can induce economic vitality but also expand inequalities in countries of origin. Second, the author examines a phenomenon given little attention until now: the extent to which policies aimed at curtailing unauthorized immigration to the United States are promoting instead the permanent immigration and settlement of vulnerable workers and their families, thus increasing the likelihood that some of their children will respond to hostility and limited opportunity through downward assimilation. When deported, those youngsters transfer deviant styles of life learned abroad to their home communities. International migration has thus become a key element in the study of development.
Emerging research associated with the “immigration revitalization” perspective suggests that immigration has been labeled inaccurately as a cause of crime in contemporary society. In fact, crime seems to be unexpectedly low in many communities that exhibit high levels of the following classic indicators of social disorganization: residential instability, ethnic heterogeneity, and immigration. But virtually all research conducted to date has been cross-sectional in nature and therefore unable to demonstrate how the relationship between immigration and crime might covary over time. This limitation is significant, especially because current versions of social disorganization theory posit a dynamic relationship between structural factors and crime that unfolds over time. The current study addresses this issue by exploring the effects of immigration on neighborhood-level homicide trends in the city of San Diego, California, using a combination of racially/ethnically disaggregated homicide victim data and community structural indicators collected for three decennial census periods. Consistent with the revitalization thesis, results show that the increased size of the foreign-born population reduces lethal violence over time. Specifically, we find that neighborhoods with a larger share of immigrants have fewer total, non-Latino White, and Latino homicide victims. More broadly, our findings suggest that social disorganization in heavily immigrant cities might be largely a function of economic deprivation rather than forms of “neighborhood” or “system” stability.
Many researchers, in attempting to explain the integration of immigrants, have stressed the factors pertaining to the social background, the motivation, and the primary group affiliations of the immigrant.2 In the present study the view was adopted that some of the most crucial factors bearing on the absorption of immigrants would be found in the social organ-ization of the communities which the immigrant contacts in the receiving country. There are three communities which are relevant: the community of his ethnicity, the native (i.e., receiving) community, and the other ethnic communities.
Recent field work on the origins of the Cuban ethnic economy in South Florida is reviewed in the context of competing theories of minority entrepreneurship. Sociological theories that emphasize contextual characteristics internal to the group itself appear to fit best the empirical evidence. They do not clarify, however, the dynamic aspects of the process—that is, the actual steps through which individual and family business goals become implemented. A typology of minority enterprise on the basis of background characteristics of its founders is developed. Implications of the Miami experience for theory and policies aimed at promoting self-employment among minorities are discussed.
Prior research has estimated structural equation models of Hispanic and black spatial assimilation using census tract data in selected cities. While these models appeared to provide an unambiguous picture of ethnic and racial segregation in cities, their estimation from ecological data posed several conceptual and statistical difficulties. This paper replicates the earlier analyses using individual-level data from the 1970 Census. Prior findings were reconfirmed, thereby validating the theory of spatial assimilation and reinforcing earlier substantive conclusions. Results also indicate that, to the extent that ecological biases affect the pattern of results, errors of substantive interpretation are conservative in nature. Thus, models estimated using census tract data for 1980 (when appropriate micro information will not be available) are not likely to yield erroneous conclusions.
Current research on the retreat from marriage emphasizes the economic underpinnings of family formation, especially among disadvantaged minorities. The paradox of Mexican American nuptiality is that first marriage rates among Mexican Americans are similar to those among Anglos, despite economic circumstances that closely approximate those of African Americans. Using event histories constructed from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, this study extends previous analyses by investigating the roles of both structural (e.g., pool of marriageable men) and cultural (e.g., familism) factors in the marriage transitions of 3,853 Mexican American, African American, and Anglo women. The results support three main conclusions. First, similarities are outweighed by differences in the marriage process across these groups. Second, cultural indicators do not explain group differences. Third, the unique aspects of the marriage process among Mexican Americans cannot be fully understood without taking their generational heterogeneity into account.