Oct. 4, 2001

GW Center Releases Data on Immigration Trends

DC a Magnet for Immigrants, But Numbers Suggest Groups More Dispersed Throughout Region than Expected

Recent census figures confirm popular impressions that the United States is a magnet for immigrants, and the Washington metropolitan area is among the destinations exerting the strongest pull. A report just released by The George Washington University’s Center for Washington Area Studies (CWAS) provides new details about where recent immigrants are settling within the region, and finds evidence that runs counter to some common expectations.

“Washington’s Newcomers: Mapping a New City of Immigration” builds upon a study the authors published with the Brookings Institution last spring. That study revealed that Washington’s recent immigrants are highly diverse in national origin and dispersed throughout the metropolitan area, locating primarily in the suburbs. Latin American and African immigrants, on the whole, tend to live closer to the city, while Asian immigrants are more likely to move to the outer suburbs.

The new report provides more precise data on specific subgroups of immigrants and tests two models often used to characterize the settlement patterns of immigrants to the United States. The “spatial assimilation” model predicts arriving immigrants will initially cluster in economically marginal neighborhoods with high concentrations of residents from their same ethnic and nationality group, then later move out if their economic condition improves. The “place stratification” model holds that immigrants will cluster upon arrival, but the racial and ethnic discrimination embedded in housing markets will create racially segregated neighborhoods with only favored groups successfully moving into more desirable neighborhoods. Data from the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) for the Washington, DC, metropolitan area, covering the period between 1990 and 1998, are used to test the adequacy of these models.

Maps of immigrant newcomers, overall, and by country of origin, reveal weak support for the spatial assimilation model. Contrary to what would be expected under the spatial assimilation model, the results show that the overall residential pattern is more dispersed. Although there are areas where new immigrants tend to cluster, such areas are seldom dominated by one or two national origin groups. The data reveal stronger support for the place stratification model. The evidence from the CWAS report suggests there is a racial hierarchy to the pattern of settlement. African immigrants are more likely than Latin American and Asian immigrants to be found in areas where African Americans are the majority.

Contributing to this study were GW faculty members Samantha Friedman (Sociology), Ivan Cheung (Geography), and Marie Price (Geography), along with Audrey Singer, a visiting fellow at the Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy within the Brookings Institution.

Copies of the report, which includes 17 color figures and maps, can be accessed for free at www.gwu.edu/~cwas
/washingtonnewcomers.pdf or are available for $25.

For more information on the study, call 994-0266.

 

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