Latino and Asian Segregation in New Destinations

Abstract

AbstractOver the past several decades, hundreds of large and small communities across the United States saw Latino and Asian migration and population growth for the first time as Latino and Asian migrants moved away from traditional “gateway” cities and regions.  This phenomenon has raised questions among researchers about how these new groups are being received in what are often predominately White communities, and in particular whether residential segregation patterns are emerging. While some have studied the residential segregation of “new destinations,” these endeavors have been limited by the methodological challenges highlighted and addressed in this book. Because many of these communities are also nonmetropolitan, issues with index bias are pronounced due to small population counts and imbalanced group sizes. In this chapter, we reexamine residential segregation in Latino and Asian new destination communities, and also consider the possibility of Black new destinations, from 1990 to 2010 across metropolitan and micropolitan areas and noncore counties in the United States. Three key methodological innovations bring about new findings on residential segregation patterns and trends in these communities: we correct for segregation index bias, rely on the separation index to assess uneven distribution, and measure segregation of households rather than persons. In general we find that segregation is initially low and dispersed in new destination communities but is rising and polarizing over time for some groups, particularly in Latino new destinations.  This is in contrast to previous studies that sometimes found high levels of segregation in Latino new destinations, with scores sometimes as high as those found in the most segregated metropolitan areas. Our adjustments to measuring residential segregation are critical for obtaining an accurate understanding of how residential segregation outcomes are unfolding in new destination communities.