Article

Black–White and Hispanic–White Segregation in U.S. Counties

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Abstract

Residential segregation in metropolitan areas has been the subject of much research, but this article analyzes patterns of white–black and white–Hispanic segregation in counties across the United States. Our purpose was to understand county variations in this one dimension of inequality. Conceiving of segregation as relative inequality of access to neighborhood resources, we measured segregation in 2000 by the index of dissimilarity (D) calculated by blocks, mapped the index values, and correlated them with census variables. Three filters enabled us to eliminate counties with characteristics that could have corrupted the analyses, leaving us with more than 1,000 counties in each analysis. Both minority groups were less segregated from whites in the West and South and in metropolitan counties. Lower segregation was strongly associated with higher minority socioeconomic status and higher percentages of minorities living in housing built in the 1990s, and Hispanic–white segregation was lower where more Hispanics were U.S.-born or English proficient. The racial threat hypothesis was supported only weakly and inconsistently. Mapping made it possible to identify regional and local patterns of high and low segregation as well as the lower segregation of suburban counties in some large metropolitan areas.

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... Segregation often relates to social resources such as employment, schools, transportation, police protection, recreation, merchandising, amenities, and other services. Moreover, a rapid growth of one race without proportionate dispersal can intensify the clustering pattern and increase racial segregation (Allen and Turner 2012;Logan, Stults, and Farley 2004). This is more likely to occur if large numbers of immigrants settle in the same neighborhoods as their relatives and friends. ...
... However, counties with higher percentages of foreign born blacks tend to have a lower segregation pattern. (Allen and Turner 2012) Residential segregation patterns for African American population are slow to change, but they are changing in comparison to the 1960s. Black neighborhoods on both the west side and the south side of Chicago are experiencing a population decrease, even compared with whites, Hispanics, or Asians. ...
... Therefore, , ( ) receives a spatial weight of 1 when census tract j is within the threshold distance of d from census tract i, and , ( ) receives a spatial weight of 0 when features fall outside of the threshold distance (Ord and Getis 1995). The outcomes of Gi* statistic are z-scores, p-values, and confidence level bin (Gi_Bin), which tells where features with high or low values cluster spatially (Allen & Turner, 2012). ...
Article
Racial segregation has long been a great concern in the United States. Scholars study and measure racial segregation over different time periods to trace the changing patterns of racial segregation. Chicago, as the nation’s third largest city, also ranked on top of the most segregated cities. Previous studies measured racial segregation in Chicago only numerically; few studies have used geospatial statistic methods to identify racial segregation patterns in the Chicago metropolitan area. This study uses “Hotspot Analysis” (Getis Ord Gi*) to identify Chicago’s most recent segregation patterns among four major ethnic and racial groups: White, African American, Hispanic and Asian. In addition, racial cluster patterns at census tract level are also measured to assess the spatial change of segregation among each studied racial group within the Chicago metropolitan area from 2000 to 2014. The results reveal that Chicago since 2000 has become less segregated, but that the African American population remains highly segregated from other racial groups. Moreover, high clusters tend to concentrate near or within Cook County and the overall clustering trend has also intensified. Advisor: J. Clark Archer
... As a result, most rural counties have only 1-3 census tracts and most rural towns are entirely inside one single census tract. Reliable measurement of RI and RIP would require having data from full count tabulations for race by poverty status for small spatial units such as census blocks (Allen & Turner, 2012;Litcher et al., 2010;Litcher et al., 2016). But the poverty data used to calculate the RIP measure is not available for census blocks. ...
... Additionally, the smallest spatial units for ACS-based race by poverty tabulations are census block groups. These units are too large to capture segregation in rural areas (Allen & Turner, 2012;Litcher et al., 2010;Litcher et al., 2016). In general, at least 30-50 spatial units are needed to accurately capture group differences in spatial distribution (Fossett, 2017). ...
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Higher rates of black mortality compared to whites in the United States are longstanding and well documented. Wide variation across racial and socioeconomic groups suggests that many deaths may be preventable. We hypothesize that higher mortality for African Americans is due to the fundamental causes of structural racism and poverty. We developed a new index, the Racial Isolation of Poverty (RIP), to examine how the race/class nexus of disadvantage is associated with higher rates of mortality for African Americans. A wide range of policies has isolated black people into areas with poorer-quality schools and fewer jobs, where over-policing substitutes for community resources. Geographic isolation by race and income has enabled sub-standard resource distribution to African Americans. Geographic isolation also allowed us to measure the effects of racism in US counties. Two main effects, Racial Isolation (RI), and the interaction of RI with economic deprivation, or RIP, were tested in a cross-sectional fixed-effects model. Both RIP and RI increased mortality for blacks while only RIP increased mortality for whites. Universal policies to promote economic security for all and reparations especially designed to promote economic security and wealth for African Americans are proposed.
... Despite the importance of these early contributions, the vast majority of the segregation literature in recent decades begins with a discussion of Ref. [24], who formalized the concept of segregation as a multidimensional phenomenon, articulating that because the mechanisms that divide people into disparate locations of a city can take several forms (namely evenness, isolation, clustering, concentration and centralization), so too can segregation indices vary in their ability to uncover these different dimensions. 1 Over the years, each of the dimensions in Massey's taxonomy has developed something of a "champion" index, which is used predominantly in the study of that particular dimension, including well-known indices such as the Dissimilarity (D), Gini (G), Entropy (H), Isolation (xPx), Relative Concentration (RCO), Relative Centralization (RCE) and the Relative Clustering (RCL). ...
... Racial segregation in the United States has been a topical focus for a vast literature. Recently Ref. [1] used the D Index to study Black-White and Hispanic-White segregation in counties across the US. In another recent contribution, Ref. [27] made a vast metropolitan study for a 40-year period on hypersegregation of black population. ...
Article
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In human geography and the urban social sciences, the segregation literature typically engages with five conceptual dimensions along which a given society may be considered segregated: evenness, isolation, clustering, concentration and centralization (all of which can incorporate or omit spatial context). Over the last several decades, dozens of segregation indices have been proposed and studied in the literature, each of which is designed to focus on the nuances of a particular dimension, or correct an oversight in earlier work. Despite their increasing proliferation, however, few of these indices remain used in practice beyond their original conception, due in part to complex formulae and data requirements, particularly for indices that incorporate spatial context. Furthermore, existing segregation software typically fails to provide inferential frameworks for either single-value or comparative hypothesis testing. To fill this gap, we develop an open-source Python package designed as a submodule for the Python Spatial Analysis Library, PySAL. This new module tackles the problem of segregation point estimation for a wide variety of spatial and aspatial segregation indices, while providing a computationally based hypothesis testing framework that relies on simulations under the null hypothesis. We illustrate the use of this new library using tract-level census data in two American cities.
... They possess a multitude of barriers to success in college and employment in mainstream professions. Facilitation of my students' global learning has become imperative as the internationalization of society accelerates and the communities where my students live remain insular (Allen & Turner, 2012;Mejia & Goshue, 2017). ...
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My research involves piloting a networked learning pedagogy, Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL), in an introductory criminal justice course at an urban U.S. community college. COIL involves the collaboration of professors from universities in different countries in creating assignments and projects, which their students collaboratively undertake. The networked learning values that are manifest in COIL are collaboration, group work, discussion, student ownership of learning, and navigating difference. I am partnering with a professor teaching an international criminal justice course at a university in The Hague. Through three assignments, we aim to develop student global learning competencies and increase student awareness of the existence of different criminal justice systems in the world. We are exploring certain aspects of global learning, including global self-awareness, perspective-taking and understanding cultural diversity. The students use "WhatsApp" and Skype technology to collaborate and the technology used to showcase the student work is Padlet, an online virtual bulletin board designed for students and teachers to collaborate and reflect and share videos, photographs, and written material. I will conduct assessment of my students’ development of global knowledge and cognizance of diverse criminal justice systems using a qualitative methodology, administering pre and post-COIL reflective surveys. Data collected in the pre-COIL survey will be compared with the post-COIL survey and analysed using the American Association of Colleges and Universities’ Value Rubric for Global Learning. The pre-COIL questions are designed to explore student expectations of the COIL assignments and collaboration with peers in a university class outside of the United States; and student awareness of differences in how criminal matters are handled and judges in other countries. Student responses will establish the foundation upon which to assess growth and transformation over the course of the semester for the students themselves and the professor. The post-COIL questions are designed to facilitate reflection of discoveries that students make about themselves and about the students abroad and the influence of cultural background on their interaction. Additional questions aim to explore differences and similarities in how students in the U.S. and abroad define justice and how it is applied in different jurisdictions.
... Ethnic segmentation appears to be influenced by prejudice, discrimination, disadvantage, and preferences [15,16]. Minorities are generally marginalized in overly segmented cities, linked with issues with safety, health care, employment, education, and poverty. ...
Article
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The Pashtun, Tajik, and Hazara ethnic groups, divided into three zones, make up most of the ethnic segments in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. However, each ethnic settlement is subdivided into smaller geographical communities. In this research, we want to validate the existence of these ethnic communities and how these communities are valuable to the residents of Kabul city. We also aimed to analyze what facilities the community shares and why it is crucial to consider these communities while redeveloping the informal settlements in Kabul city. We did a literature review on ethnic segmentation, chose a case study in district 13 of Kabul, interviewed the residents and head of the community, and distributed socio-economic questionnaires made by the Ministry of urban development and land Afghanistan in three streets to determine how the ethnicities are subdivided. Ethnicities are divided into smaller sub-ethnic communities based on their migrated rural districts. People live together because of a communal identity known as Qawm. Each community shares a mosque, and to redevelop their areas, they want to be relocated near their current community of ethnicity. Moreover, ethnicity is a significant factor in choosing where to live in Kabul. Hence, the government policymaker must consider the importance of these communities in redeveloping informal settlements.
... Discrimination, disadvantage, preferences, and social networkism all seem to play a role in segregation [6,7]. The actions of members of minority groups are restricted by discrimination and prejudice by the majority group. ...
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This study examines the history of master planning in Kabul city and how the government approaches segregation through urban planning. There are five master plans made for Kabul city, starting in 1964, with the others being conceived in 1970, 1978, 2011, and 2018. The civil war exacerbated the ethnic segmentation in Kabul city. The city is ethnically divided mainly among the different ethnicities of Pashtun, Tajik, and Hazara, which live in three different zones. The urban planning literature and master plans for Kabul city are surveyed, starting from the 1960s with the first master plan to the 2018 Kabul urban design framework. The first three master plans were designed on technical rather than communitive rationalities, with authoritarian planning. However, the fourth master plan of 2011 was developed through engagement with citizens and addressed the ethnic segregation in the city in abstract ways. The fifth masterplan, Kabul urban design framework, was a step backward in participatory planning; it also ignored the ethnic segmentation in the city by unequally distributing the future economic zones, administrative and facilities hubs. The past master plans have ignored the ethnic segregation of the city; there is no detailed plan on how the city will approach segregation through urban planning.
... In Allen and Turner (2012) and Johnston et al. (2004), the authors claimed that four types of factors appear to contribute to segregation are discrimination, disadvantage, preferences and social networks. In a different work, segregation is decomposed into two types: social segregation, as observed in interactions among people, and spatial segregation, as determined by the physical locations of people (Blumenstock and Fratamico 2013). ...
Article
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Studying segregation between populations of different ages, ethnicities and social classes has been a prominent theme for at least half a century. To measure segregation, past works often use governmental surveys due to the scarcity of reliable data. In this work, we used call data records (CDR) provided by one of the largest mobile operators in Estonia, for studying segregation behavior based on gender, age, language and county. We consider commonly used Freeman’s segregation index for measuring segregation. Our findings suggest that (1) Gender: gender segregation exists in Estonia and its traces are visible in individuals calling hours, connectivity among age-groups, preferred language of communication, calling county and at the workplace; (2) Age: the prime working individuals (i.e., (25–54) age-group) and elderly (i.e., (64–100) age-group) are more segregated; and (3) Language: Estonian-speaking and Russian-speaking individuals are segregated based on language.
... Factors and mechanisms underlying activity space-based segregation have attracted growing attention in recent years. Previous studies have compared the activity space-based segregation level among social groups, highlighting the importance of racial discrimination, institutional and structural factors (e.g., redlining), socio-economic disadvantages, and individual preferences (e.g., a preference for interacting with people of the same race or ethnicity) as causal factors for sociospatial segregation in both residential area and activity space (Allen & Turner, 2012;Logan et al., 2004;Silm et al., 2018). Structural discrimination in housing and job markets as well as socio-economic disadvantages tend to restrict the daily activities and activity spaces of minorities, leading to systematically different activity spaces among social groups (Iceland & Wilkes, 2006;Jones & Pebley, 2014;Lin & Gaubatz, 2017;Wang & Li, 2016). ...
Article
The socio-spatial segregation experienced by migrants has attracted considerable attention and an increasing number of studies have examined segregation in migrants’ daily activity space recently. However, research on activity diversity and spatial contact between local residents and migrants has been limited. This paper fills this knowledge gap by investigating the differences in the extensity, intensity, diversity and exclusivity of activity spaces among local residents, urban migrants and rural migrants based on their routine activities in suburban Shanghai, China. It finds that rural migrants have low daily mobility and are physically constrained, and there is spatial sorting of activity locations among different social groups. Neighborhood environment significantly influences activity space-based segregation: People who live in neighborhoods with higher POI density and better access to commercial establishments and public spaces have small activity spaces, while those who live in neighborhoods with mixed land use, better access to public transit, and higher street connectivity have more diverse activity participation. Neighborhoods with better public spaces and a lower land use mix promote shared activity spaces. This study uncovers the segregation suffered by migrants by examining the usage of urban space and spatial interactions among social groups, enhancing our understanding of activity space-based segregation in developing countries.
... A set of works have also focused on understanding the varying types of segregation among society using CDR. Four types of factors appear to contribute to segregation are discrimination, disadvantage, preferences, and social networks [20,21]. For example, authors in [13] studied the temporal variation of ethnic segregation in the city of Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. ...
Article
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Understanding segregation plays a significant role in determining the development pathways of a country as it can help governmental and other concerned agencies to prepare better-targeted policies for the needed groups. However, inferring segregation through alternative data, apart from governmental surveys remains limited due to the non-availability of representative datasets. In this work, we utilize Call Data Records (CDR) provided by one of Estonia’s major telecom operators to research the complexities of social interaction and human behavior in order to explain gender segregation. We analyze the CDR with two objectives. First, we study gender segregation by exploring the social network interactions of the CDR. We find that the males are tightly linked which allows information to spread faster among males compared to females. Second, we perform the micro-analysis using various users’ characteristics such as age, language, and location. Our findings show that the prime working-age population (i.e., (24,54] years) is more segregated than others. We also find that the Estonian-speaking population (both males and females) are more likely to interact with other Estonian-speaking individuals of the same gender. Further to ensure the quality of this dataset, we compare the CDR data features with publicly available Estonian census datasets. We observe that the CDR dataset is indeed a good representative of the Estonian population, which indicates that the findings of this study reasonably reflect the reality of gender segregation in the Estonian Landscape.
... This reproduction of spatial inequality between members of different ethnic and social groups may emerge because of many factors, such as policies, economic resources, social networks, discrimination, and the lived experiences of people that often operate in overlapping ways (Krysan and Crowder, 2017;van Ham et al., 2018). Socio-economic stratification due to lower income or discrimination can lead to reduced opportunities in the labour and housing markets (Allen and Turner, 2012), as well as inaccessibility to mobility and services. Studies conducted in Hong Kong have shown that people on low incomes living in disadvantaged neighbourhoods tend to undertake other everyday activities in other underprivileged neighbourhoods (Yip et al., 2016) and are therefore more likely to be exposed to people of similar socio-economic backgrounds (Wang and Li, 2016). ...
Article
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In addition to permanent migration, different forms of cross-border mobility were on the rise before the COVID-19 pandemic, ranging from tourism to job-related commuting. In this paper ethno-linguistic differences in cross-border mobility using the activity space framework are considered. New segregation theories emphasise that segregation in one part of the activity space (e.g. in residential neighbourhood) affects the segregation in other parts of the activity space (e.g. in workplace), and that spatial mobility between activity locations is equally important in the production and reproduction of ethnic inequalities. Until now, segregation in activity spaces has been studied by focusing on daily activities inside one country. In reality, an increasing number of people pursue their activities across different countries, so that their activity spaces extend beyond state borders, which can have important implications for the functioning of ethno-linguistic communities and the transfer of inequalities from one country to another. This study takes advantage of mobility data based on mobile phone use, and the new avenues provided for the study of ethno-linguistic differences in temporary cross-border mobility. Such data allow the study of different cross-border visitor groups—tourists, commuters, transnationals, long-term stayers—by providing the means to measure the frequency of visits and time spent abroad, and to link together the travel of each person over several years. Results show that members of the ethno-linguistic minority population in Estonia make more trips than members of the ethno-linguistic majority, and they also have higher probability of being tourists and cross-border commuters than the majority population, paying frequent visits to their ancestral homelands. The connections between ethno-linguistic background and temporary cross-border mobility outlined in this study allows for future discussion on how (in)equalities can emerge in transnational activity space and what implications it has for segregation.
... Block data were once widely used in segregation analysis including most notably the landmark study by Taeuber and Taeuber (1965) and dozens of studies that used and supplemented these measures (e.g., Schnore and Evenson 1966;Roof 1972;Roof and Van Valey 1972;Sorenson et al. 1975). But in recent decades, with only occasional exceptions such as Lichter and colleagues (2010) and Allen and Turner (2012), segregation studies have relied primarily on tract-level data. The examples reviewed above highlight how the practice of using larger spatial units such as tracts and even block groups can limit the potential scope of segregation studies by creating problems for assessing residential separation between groups when one group is small. ...
Chapter
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In Chap. 6 I documented that displacement (D) and separation (S) routinely diverge by large amounts in some empirical analyses. Then in Chap. 7 I provided technical discussions to clarify how D and S can vary independently. I also stressed that the combination of high-D, low-S – which occurs when displacement from uneven distribution is dispersed rather than concentrated – has important sociological implications and I advised researchers to check for this pattern and guard against incorrectly assuming that high levels of displacement (D) are accompanied by high levels of group separation (S). In this chapter I try to encourage researchers to follow this advice by discussing three topics relevant to measuring separation and understanding how it may diverge from displacement.
... This literature suggests that the explanation for lower levels of suburban segregation overall may be differences among groups of suburbs. In this study, we follow much of the recent segregation literature, which has placed renewed emphasis on scale (Allen & Turner, 2012;Östh, Clark, & Malmberg, 2014). Fischer's (2008) recent useful contribution, for example, decomposes the entropy index to show that residential sorting within the suburbs accounts for a growing proportion of Black-White segregation generally. ...
Article
Over the past several decades, researchers have investigated segregation, differentiating between central cities and suburbs. However, suburbs have become more differentiated. Using Census 2000, Census 2010, and American Community Survey (ACS) data for 2007–2011, this article analyzes segregation in the 100 most populous metropolitan statistical areas in the United States, differentiating between central cities, mature suburbs, and developing suburbs. For each subgeography, we consider the racial and ethnic proportions, the dissimilarity index for each combination of racial and ethnic groups, and the isolation index for each racial and ethnic group. We find that Black–White and Latino–White dissimilarity levels in mature suburbs are closer to the corresponding levels in central cities. From 2000 to 2010, Black–White segregation indices decreased for all subgeographies in all regions and Latino–White segregation indices increased for all subgeographies in Census Region South. The findings for the dissimilarity indices suggest that finer-grained analyses of segregation could yield insights on local-level processes that may influence segregation in the 3 types of places and could suggest policy interventions to address segregation’s persistence.
... Consequently, Chinese urbanization exhibited social change marked simultaneously by both differentiation and mixing. In contrast to the four types of factors (discrimination, disadvantage, preferences, and social networks) identified as contributing to segregation in the Western context (Allen & Turner, 2012), transitional urban China demonstrated an inclusive complexity. This complexity is characterized by two sets of dual relationships between social stratification and social diversity and overall mixing but place-specific segregation at the local scale propelled by at least three sets of dialectic dual-structure forces. ...
Article
Socio-spatial segregation, and particularly racial and ethnic segregation, has been extensively studied in the Western context but is less researched for Chinese cities, particularly those in less developed regions. The city of Kunming in remote southwest China is characterized by a transition from a socialist manufacturing center to a free market service economy and the strong presence of a diversity of ethnic groups. Kunming provides an opportunity to examine the similarities and disparities in the socio-spatial landscape compared to well-developed cities in China and other post-socialist contexts as well as those in the West. In this paper, population census data at the community level from 2000 together with its spatial boundary data are used to create 39 demographic, educational, occupational and housing variables for 431 communities. Principal component analysis, hierarchical clustering and spatial segregation indicators are combined in order to identify, classify and analyse the spatial segregation of diverse social groups. The study finds that, unusually for Chinese cities, ethnic minority and gender are significant factors, and it demonstrates that both spatial mixture and social differentiation simultaneously characterize Kunming.
... Four types of factors appear to contribute to segregation: discrimination, disadvantage, preferences, and social networks (Allen and Turner, 2012;Johnston et al., 2004). Discrimination and prejudice by the dominant group restrict the activities of the members of minority groups. ...
Article
The aim of this study is to determine the temporal variation of ethnic segregation in the city of Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. We employ data on mobile-phone use to compare variations in segregation indices during the day, the week, and the year. The results indicate that the locations of people are more segregated at night, with considerably less segregation during the daytime. The segregation is significantly lower on workdays compared to weekends. Segregation is also lower during summer holidays compared to the winter working period. The results show that although places of residence are segregated, different ethnic groups use the city together during the day, which increases the potential for interethnic contacts. The results demonstrate also that temporal segregation indices based on mobile-phone use are considerably lower than segregation indices of places of residence that are derived from the census.
... This is hardly surprising since such indices provide a way to describe and compare the distribution of population groups-defined by age, ethnic origin, country of birth, or income-across a metropolitan area, as well as compare the segregation levels of population groups in several metropolitan areas (Apparicio, Petkevitch, & Charron, 2008). As a result, they are widely used in urban studies (see in particular Allen & Turner, 2012;Iceland, Mateos, & Sharp, 2011;Lloyd & Shuttleworth, 2012;Martori & Apparicio, 2011;Peach, 2009;Poulsen, Johnson, & Forrest, 2010;Scopilliti & Iceland, 2008). For example, using the classic dissimilarity index (Duncan & Duncan, 1955a, 1955b, Peach (2009) found that ethnic segregation in main English cities declined from 1991 to 2001 and the level of segregation was high only for one ethnic group-the Bangladeshis. ...
Article
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The aim of this article is to introduce a new stand-alone application—Geo-Segregation Analyzer—that is capable of calculating 43 residential segregation indices, regardless of the population groups or the metropolitan region under study. In practical terms, the user just needs to have a Shapefile geographic file containing counts of population groups that differ in ethnic origin, birth country, age, or income across a metropolitan area at a small area level (e.g., census tracts). Developed in Java using the GeoTools library, this free and open-source application is both multiplatform and multilanguage. The software functions on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux operating systems and its user interface currently supports 10 languages (English, French, Spanish, Catalan, German, Italian, Portuguese, Creole, Vietnamese, and Chinese). The application permits users to display and manipulate several Shapefile geographic files and to calculate 19 one-group indices, 13 two-group indices, 8 multigroup indices, and 3 local measures that could be mapped (location quotient, entropy measure, and typology of the ethnic areas proposed by Poulsen, Johnson, and Forrest).
Chapter
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For at least half a century, much of the literature on residential segregation has primarily focused on large metropolitan areas, where most of the population resides in one or more high-density urban cores and medium-density, outlying suburban environments. Many influential landmark segregation studies have focused on small samples featuring primarily the largest 50–60 metropolitan areas in the country. In contrast, our knowledge of residential segregation outside of metropolitan contexts is very limited, even as nonmetropolitan communities are becoming more racially and ethnically diverse. This is due in large part to the challenges with measuring residential segregation in nonmetropolitan contexts, which we address in this book. By using segregation measures that are corrected for index bias, measuring segregation of households rather than persons, and relying on the often overlooked separation index, we draw substantive conclusions about patterns and trends of White-Black, White-Asian, and White-Latino residential segregation in nonmetropolitan communities from 1990 to 2010. We also further demonstrate the superiority of our methodological choices by comparing our findings to those that would be produced through conventional approaches and by reviewing case studies of selected nonmetropolitan areas. Substantively, we find that segregation in nonmetropolitan communities is often not as high as what is observed in metropolitan areas, especially for Asian and Latino households. However, segregation is certainly capable of being high in nonmetropolitan communities, even when the minority proportion is very small. White-Latino segregation is typically quite low and has remained stable in micropolitan areas while slightly declining in noncore counties. This is more so true for White-Asian segregation in nonmetropolitan communities where segregation is very low and has remained low since at least 1990. Methodologically, we conclude that our innovations to segregation measurement expand opportunities to broaden and deepen the literature to understand the nature of residential segregation in nonmetropolitan communities.
Chapter
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In this first chapter of empirical findings, we provide an overview of trends and patterns in the residential segregation of households by race and ethnicity from 1990 to 2010 across metropolitan areas, micropolitan areas, and noncore counties. These three community types give our analysis wide geographic coverage across the United States. We examine segregation between White, Black, Asian, and Latino households across all areas over the two decades bracketed by the three decennial census years of 1990, 2000, and 2010. What distinguishes the analyses in this chapter from previous studies is that we apply new methods for measuring residential segregation which include correcting for index bias, using a measure that is better suited for distinguishing between different patterns of uneven distribution, and measuring residential segregation of households rather than persons. These adjustments allow us to expand the scope of our analysis to include more communities beyond the largest metropolitan areas while measuring residential segregation at the block-level, which is necessary for measuring segregation in less densely populated areas. While our findings at times reflect what past studies have found, it is more often the case that we reveal different levels and patterns of segregation, especially when focusing on White-Latino and White-Asian segregation where patterns of uneven distribution are more dispersed than previously understood. This first empirical chapter sets new benchmarks for residential segregation measurement and analysis in U.S. communities.
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Measuring and explaining sociospatial segregation is essential in urban and social geography. Recent advances in activity space-based segregation provide new opportunities to study sociospatial segregation. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the emerging activity space-based segregation research in terms of measurements, dimensions, and influential factors. We highlight the trend toward integrating spatial, temporal, and social dimensions in activity space-based segregation measurement. Then, a multidimensional framework is constructed to cover the spatial form, opportunity exposure, spatiotemporal interaction, and social relationship of activity space-based segregation research. This paper ends with challenges and future directions for activity space-based segregation research, highlighting the importance of the temporal dimension, social interaction, influential mechanisms, and social effects.
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Non-Hispanic Black women remain at increased risk for adverse birth outcomes, yet Black immigrant women are at lower risk than their US-born counterparts. This study examines whether neighborhood context contributes to the nativity advantage in preterm birth (PTB, < 37 weeks) among Black women in California. A sample of live singleton births to non-Hispanic US-born (n = 83,169), African-born (n = 7151), and Caribbean-born (n = 943) Black women was drawn from 2007 to 2010 California birth records and geocoded to urban census tracts. We used 2010 American Community Survey data to measure tract-level Black immigrant density, Black racial concentration, and a neighborhood deprivation index. Risk ratios (RR) and 95% confidence intervals (95%CI) were estimated using log-binomial regression to assess whether neighborhood context partially explained nativity differences in PTB risk. Compared to US-born Black women, African-born Black women had lower PTB risk (RR = 0.65, 95%CI: 0.60–0.71). The difference in PTB risk between US- and Caribbean-born women did not reach statistical significance (RR = 0.87, 95%CI: 0.71–1.05). The nativity advantage in PTB risk was robust to neighborhood social conditions and maternal factors for African-born women (RR = 0.59, 95%CI: 0.51–0.67). This study is one of few that considers area-level explanations of the nativity advantage among Black immigrants and makes a significant contribution by showing that the neighborhood context does not explain the nativity advantage in PTB among Black women in California. This could be due to many factors that should be examined in future research.
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In this essay, I consider the ways in which nationalism in both the U.S. and Sweden relies on notions of exceptionalism, and I discuss what this means materially for their own populations and for the world. The analysis consists of two lines of attack against both these assumptions of exceptionalism - one focusing on psychological processes and the other political economy processes. I examine the historical development of the ideas of U.S. and Swedish exceptionalism, and consider the roles of ignorance, denial, and projection in maintaining these problematic ideas. Through the use of a materialist definition of racism, I show how the nationalist ideology of exceptionalism in these two cases harms the well-being of their own citizens as well as citizens of other states. I argue that a combination of the psychological and political economy approaches are necessary if we are to both understand the power and impact of exceptionalism as a nationalist ideology and to be able to effectively work against their tendency to "crush" marginalized groups.
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Both assimilation theory and common sense suggest that the longer the immigrants reside in a host society, the more they become integrated. However, studies conducted in many countries show the opposite: younger generations of immigrants are more segregated than their parents. The aim of this study is to examine differences in ethnic segregation between age groups of the Estonian majority and Russian-speaking minority in Estonia. We use census data and passive mobile positioning data (CDR) to measure levels of segregation at the individual level for important activity locations and for the whole activity space. Results indicate that segregation in both places of residence and out-of-home non-employment activity districts is higher in younger than in older age groups. Measures of activity space show that the activity spaces of Russian-speakers of all age groups are smaller and less diverse than those of Estonians, and are mainly bound to the places of residence of Russian-speakers. The differences between the activity space measures for Estonians and Russian-speakers generally reduce with age, which suggests higher ethnic segregation in younger age groups. The results thus show that, contrary to assimilation theory, the spatial behaviour of Russian-speakers has not become similar to that of Estonians over generations.
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This paper contains an analysis of ethnic differences in activity locations during public and national holidays. Holidays relate to identity, and the celebration of holidays can be a very important part of acculturation processes and are therefore relevant to ethnic integration policies. We study the out-of-home nonemployment activity locations of 12,500 respondents in Estonia, using mobile phone positioning data. The results show that during holidays, ethnic segregation, measured using an index of dissimilarity, is significantly higher than it is on regular days, especially outside the capital city. The type of holiday, such as whether it is a national or international holiday, has a particular effect on people's spatial behaviour. On Estonian public holidays, Estonians are more likely to leave Tallinn than Russian speakers. There are 77 per cent more Estonians and 33 per cent more Russian speakers outside the capital than on non-holidays. The paper depicts different temporal layers of segregation, which also indicates different integration potential in leisure spaces under various time frames.
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There are many segregation measures introduced and utilized in geographic research up to this date. Because residential segregation can be defined in more than one way the measure’s formulation is dependent on the particular definition the researcher is trying to reflect. Another distinctive feature of the quantitative exploration of segregation is the role of geographic scale. In contrast, global indices focus on overall level of spatial separation of population in the urban area while local indices assume that the index magnitude varies from place to place across the city. The main purpose of this study is to introduce a new measure of segregation that focuses on the lack of interactions of the population groups and to explore its properties. The proposed measure is a modified co-location quotient (CLQ) that was originally applied to point data as a measure of spatial association between two categorical variables. The first part of this dissertation introduces two versions of modified CLQ that are applicable to categories of areally aggregated population. One is the global measure that captures the overall exposure of one population group given the presence of another group. The local version of the measure describes levels of exposure for every single spatial unit. Both, global and local quotients have two basic specifications – two-group CLQ and same-group CLQ. Each variant of the measure allows the option to include the neighborhood size in computation, which theoretically defines the space within which people have the possibility for interaction. The use of CLQ in the proposed mathematical configuration expands the discussion of dimensions of segregation by suggesting the connection between different dimensions that are covered by co-location measure. Using publicly available data from U.S. Census Bureau on racial composition of population CLQs were computed for thirty urban areas, where twenty nine are metro areas and one is Washington D.C. The basic units of analysis are census tracts and block groups that contain aggregated population counts. Three decennial releases are used: 1990, 2000 and 2010. The results suggest an overall, but uneven, increase in the exposure of white people in given urban areas. Patterns of concentration for white people remained stable over the time span. But the concentration of black people shows a substantial decrease indicating an increasing exposure of blacks in the global sense. Conversely, same-group CLQs for whites and for blacks indicate unequal experiences for these two population groups in America. Additionally, various visualization techniques related to co-location measure were explored. The pointillist approach, suggested in this study, is found to be particularly effective technique for displaying CLQ results compared to widely utilized choropleth mapping.
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Quantitative segregation research focuses almost exclusively on the spatial sorting of demographic groups. This research largely ignores the structural characteristics of neighborhoods – such as crime, job accessibility, and school quality – that likely help determine important household outcomes. This paper summarizes the research on segregation, neighborhood effects, and concentrated disadvantage, and argues that we should pay more attention to neighborhood structural characteristics, and that the data increasingly exist to include measures of spatial segregation and neighborhood opportunity. The paper concludes with a brief empirical justification for the inclusion of data on neighborhood violence and a discussion on policy applications.
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This article explores immigrants' socioeconomic success consequential to their choice of neighborhood. We describe and analyze seven aspects of socioeconomic success during the 1980s for 14 immigrant groups in five metropolitan areas. Exposure indices measuring aspects of the census tracts in which these groups lived in 1980 are calculated and analyzed. Multiple regression explores the degree to which 1980s neighborhood context explains socioeconomic advances of pre-1980 immigrants during the 1980s, controlling for group starting position in 1980 and metropolitan area of residence. Findings support the notion that a neighborhood of poorly educated, welfare-assisted, nonworking residents retards educational, professional, and employment prospects of immigrants. We also find evidence that a higher incidence of residential exposure to other members of one's immigrant group leads to higher rates of poverty and, perhaps, lower gains in employment during the subsequent decade. These findings should be interpreted cautiously, however, because of data limitations, specification shortcomings, and ambiguities in interpreting causation.
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The benefits of direct, personal contact with members of another group are well established empirically. This Special Issue complements that body of work by demonstrating the effects of various forms of indirect contact on intergroup attitudes and relations. Indirect contact includes (a) extended contact: learning that an ingroup member is friends with an outgroup member, (b) vicarious contact: observing an ingroup member interact with an outgroup member, and (c) imagined contact: imagining oneself interacting with an outgroup member. The effects of indirect contact not only occur independently of direct contact, they often involve distinct psychological mechanisms. The present article briefly reviews work on direct intergroup contact and then discusses recent theoretical and empirical developments in the study of extended contact, vicarious contact, and imagined contact. We consider the similarities and distinctions in the dynamics of these forms of indirect contact and conclude by identifying promising directions for future research.
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As a topic of study, segregation is both controversial and complex. Segregation is often seen to mark a failure of assimilation and a process that spatially victimizes certain minority groups. Eliminating segregation is a normative goal in many societies hoping to end the division of their urban areas on the basis of race and ethnicity. Research is often marshaled to uncover how segregation develops and how it may be mitigated. A second area of controversy involves the construction of the categories upon which segregation is measured. Current social scientific research articulates how racial and ethnic categories are formed and how these categorizations are then reified. The classification of some groups as “racial” and others as “ethnic” affirms the power of categorizations and the ascription of difference to groups of people (Boal, 2000). The basis by which we measure segregation often depends on categories delineated by official statistical agencies (see Berry and Henderson, 2002; Forest, 2002). The U.S. Census defines “racial categories,” ethnic categories based on Hispanic status, and categories based on ancestry data. Other countries officially designate groups on the basis of religion or nationality or choose not to distinguish some groups at all. Any study of segregation involves a group in a context. Most research focuses on one group/context dyad but some studies are more comparative. Groups vary considerably, not only in their cultural makeup but also in the financial, human, and other resources they possess. Context generally refers to a place and accordingly accounts for a wide variety of factors relating to history, culture, economic opportunity, and the political state. In any event, the group-context relationship ensures that the potential for variation is enormous. This progress report is the first of three dealing with segregation research in geography. We have decided to divide our overview of segregation into the factors that produce it, the varied meanings ascribed to it, and the manifold consequences of group separation. In this first report, we examine research related to the causes of segregation. The second report will focus more explicitly on the multiple meanings ascribed to segregation and the relationship between segregation and ethnic identity. The third report will look at the consequences of segregation.
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This paper proposes a new model of ethnic settlement, the ethnoburb. Ethnoburbs are suburban ethnic clusters of residential areas and business districts in large American metropolitan areas. They are multi-ethnic communities, in which one ethnic minority group has a significant concentration, but does not necessarily comprise a majority. The paper operationalises the ethnoburb model via an analysis of the demographic profiles and socioeconomic characteristics of the ethnoburban Chinese population in Los Angeles in order to understand the ethnoburb's role as a global economic outpost. This analysis also highlights social stratification by country of origin, and the micro-geographies of neighbourhood and workplace, features which reveal the ethnoburb's character as an urban mosaic.
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Spatial assimilation theory predicts that racial and ethnic residential segregation results at least in part from socioeconomic differences across groups. In contrast, the place stratification perspective emphasizes the role of prejudice and discrimination in shaping residential patterns. This article evaluates these perspectives by examining the role of race and class in explaining the residential segregation of African Americans, Hispanics, and Asians from non-Hispanic whites in all U.S. metropolitan areas over the 1990 to 2000 period. Using the dissimilarity index and various indicators of socioeconomic status (SES), we find that in both 1990 and 2000 high-SES racial and ethnic groups were significantly less segregated from non-Hispanic whites than corresponding low-SES groups, especially among Hispanics and Asians—much as the spatial assimilation model would predict. Consistent with the place stratification model, African Americans of all SES levels continued to be more segregated from whites than were Hispanics and Asians, and this changed little between 1990 and 2000. However, the importance of SES in explaining the segregation of African Americans from whites increased over the period, while not for Hispanics and Asian Americans, providing support for a modest increase in the applicability of the spatial assimilation model for African Americans in the 1990s.
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Social area analysis tends to view the city as constituted of a mosaic of socially homogeneous containers. The Chicago model views the mosaic as compactly organised around one centre and as a response to geometrically deduced forces. The Los Angeles model views social areas to be socially constituted in a more dispersed geometry. Our model, verified in this study, shows that globalising cities may produce highly heterogeneous residential spaces, even in highly ethnic societies. We propose to start the analysis from individuals' behaviour, with respect to their actual daily life-spaces and social networks. We argue that, under these conditions, a multilayered spatial model better describes the socio-spatial reality of cities that integrate people in the globalising world. Each layer represents a socially constituted space which integrates participants in a particular social network. Members of the network manage their daily life in these spaces, which are not necessarily continuous, and in many cases expand into wide and sometimes even global horizons, creating thereby interstices with other groups' social spaces. In most cases, there are partly open social networks among layered social areas but, in one-third of the cases, protagonists developed social networks only with colleagues from their own ethnic group, avoiding interlayered networks. This may lead to social segregation even in residentially heterogeneous areas. In such cases, segregation is the result of a lack of social networks among layers. However, segregation may also follow the traditional model, in which a group concentrates in an ethnically homogeneous residential space. This may develop in areas claimed by one social group constituting a segregated territory and having intraethnic networks limited to the specific ethnic territory.
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Abstract We examine trends in five dimensions of segregation for African Americans, Hispanics, Asians and Pacific Islanders, and American Indians and Alaska Natives: evenness, exposure, concentration, centralization, and clustering. The trend for African Americans is clearest— declines in segregation over the 1980 to 2000 period, regardless of the dimension considered. Nevertheless, segregation is still higher for African Americans than for the other groups across all measures. Latinos are generally the next most highly segregated group, followed by Asians and Pacific Islanders and then American Indians and Alaska Natives. Asians and Pacific Islanders and Hispanics both tended to experience increases in segregation over the period, though not across all dimensions. Increases were generally larger for Asians and Pacific Islanders than for Hispanics. The story of American Indian and Alaska Native residential segregation is mixed, with declines across some dimensions of segregation and increases in others. 1 Racial and Ethnic Residential Segregation in the United States: 1980-2000 Residential segregation has been the subject of considerable research for many,years. An extensive tour through any major American city reveals that many neighborhoods,are racially and ethnically homogenous. In addition to controversiesabout the causes and consequences,of residential segregation, there are substantial disagreements as to how to best measure it. Massey and Denton (1988) identified 19 residential segregation indexes and used cluster analysis to distinguish five key dimensions: evenness, exposure, concentration, centralization, and clustering.
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This study contributes to the debates on both spatial mismatch and “social-network” mismatch by considering the independent effects of spatial and social accessibility on the unemployment of less-educated native-born black and immigrant women. These groups experience relatively high unemployment yet differ in their residential patterns and the hypothesized capacities of their social networks. Using detailed geographic census data matched to travel data, I calculated an accessibility index to measure spatial job accessibility and used information on neighborhood characteristics and household composition to assess social accessibility. The results indicate that better spatial accessibility to jobs is associated with lower unemployment among native-born black and foreign-born Mexican and Vietnamese women; no association was detected among the remaining immigrant groups. The analysis yielded no empirical support for the advantages that residence in an enclave may provide female immigrant residents in the form of access to employment through social networks. In fact, the results point to detrimental effects of residence in an ethnic enclave for foreign-born Mexican and Vietnamese women. Finally, among all groups, living with other employed adults significantly and substantively decreased a woman's likelihood of unemployment, indicating the importance of household-based social accessibility for less-educated native-born black and immigrant women's employment outcomes.
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We may now summarize the five types of enclaves and ghettos. The traditional assimilation-diffusion model of the Chicago three-generational schemas is the most widespread and general type. Settlement begins in the inner city; the second generation moves out a little and becomes more assimilated; the third generation is suburbanized, diffused and totally assimilated. Even in its early days, the center is not the exclusive preserve of one group. The American ghetto model is involuntary and plural (nonassimilatory). It starts in the inner city, but with almost exclusive concentration of the minority. A high proportion of the inner-city black population live in such areas; nearly all in such areas are black. It expands outwards in a segmented shape over time, but remains dually exclusive. Nevertheless, there are attractive neighborhoods on the edge of black clusters to which black professionals move through choice rather than discrimination. Such neighborhoods may be spatially linked to the dominant cluster, but their residents would object to their being termed ghettos. The voluntary plural model is the persistent enclave. It is the San Francisco or New York Chinatown model. A high proportion of the population of the areas may be of a given ethnic group, but the Chinese population of Chinatown forms only a minority (often a small minority) of the total Chinese population of the city. It is a symbolic or tourist center; it is an institutional or market center; it may remain and persist over time, but it is not the exclusive center of the ethnic group. The voluntary plural relocated model describes Jewish residential spatial patterning, that is, a Jewish population concentrated in the inner city relocates en masse to the suburbs. The London Jewish shift from the East End to the northwestern suburbs is the best-studied example in the United Kingdom. Although segregation levels measured by the ID may be high, the areas are not the exclusive preserve of the Jewish population, but are mixed. Nor are all Jews living in such areas. The parachuted suburban model applies to concentrated areas of affluent, often transitory sojourners. The Japanese in London and Düsseldorf or the Hong Kong Chinese in Vancouver are good examples.
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Forbes takes a critical look at the "contact hypothesis" - the assumption commonly held by social scientists that increased contact between different ethnic groups gives each group more accurate information about the other and thus reduces friction. By distinguishing aggregate from individual relations, Forbes suggests a way out of the perplexities induced by current social science literature on prejudice and discrimination. Scientific research suggests that increased contact between culturally distinct groups in some cases gives rise to more intense conflict. Yet individuals who get to know each other better generally like each other better. Can these apparently conflicting generalizations both be true? asks Forbes. They are, he argues, and he takes contemporary social science to task for failing to show how and why this is possible. The author clarifies the weaknesses of contact theory, develops an alternative "linguistic model" of ethnic conflict, and concludes with penetrating reflections on the politics and methodology of the social sciences today.
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This paper conceives of residential segregation as a multidimensional phenomenon varying along five distinct axes of measurement: evenness, exposure, concentration, centralization, and clustering. Twenty indices of segregation are surveyed and related conceptually to one of the five dimensions. Using data from a large set of U.S. metropolitan areas, the indices are intercorrelated and factor analyzed. Orthogonal and oblique rotations produce pattern matrices consistent with the postulated dimensional structure. Based on the factor analyses and other information, one index was chosen to represent each of the five dimensions, and these selections were confirmed with a principal components analysis. The paper recommends adopting these indices as standard indicators in future studies of segregation.
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Four hypotheses concerning the character and consequences of participation in an ethnic enclave economy are examined. The first concerns the justifiability of operationalizing enclave participation on the basis of place of residence, as done in recently published research. The second and third pertain to the effects of ethnic economy participation on entrepreneurs and workers, respectively. The fourth deals with determinants of self-employment among ethnic minorities. Two data sets are employed in this analysis: the 1980 Census individual sample for Cuban-born adult immigrants in South Florida and a 1983-86 longitudinal survey of Mariel entrants in the same area. These two independent data sets permit a more authoritative evaluation of the hypotheses. They also allow an assessment of the extent to which earlier findings about the pre-1980 Cuban-born population apply to the more recent entrants. Results consistently contradict depictions of ethnic enterprise as vehicles for exploitation and of enclaves as mere residential agglomerations. These structures are defined by physical proximity of firms, not dwellings. Ascriptive factors--primarily gender and marital status--play a decisive role in the emergence of enclave enterprise net of human capital endowments. Theoretical implications of these findings, in particular the relationship between intact nuclear families and the rise of an entrepreneurial minority, are discussed.
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This research analyzes differences between immigrant and native-born Black women in the relationship between racial residential segregation and low birthweight risk. Differences in nativity are investigated because sociocultural diversity may affect women's exposure to environmental and psychosocial stressors associated with living in highly segregated neighborhoods and in the presence of protective "ethnic density" effects. Using vital statistics data for New York City on all births to "Black" mothers in 2000, we analyze the associations between segregation and the risk of having a low birthweight infant for immigrant and native-born mothers. Multilevel models are estimated that include maternal characteristics, census tract poverty, and a spatial measure of local segregation. For U.S.-born Black women, living in racially segregated areas—areas with high racial isolation—is associated with a higher low birthweight risk. Similar findings are uncovered for immigrant Black women; however, the association between segregation and low birthweight disappears when differences in country/region of origin are controlled. For immigrant Black women, the health impacts of segregation are much more muted and complex than those for the native-born. [Key words: Racial residential segregation; low birthweight; immigrants; ethnic density; New York City.]
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The census tract—based residential segregation literature rests on problematic assumptions about geographic scale and proximity. We pursue a new tract-free approach that combines explicitly spatial concepts and methods to examine racial segregation across egocentric local environments of varying size. Using 2000 Census data for the 100 largest U.S. metropolitan areas, we compute a spatially modified version of the information theory index H to describe patterns of Black—White, Hispanic-White, Asian-White, and multigroup segregation at different scales. We identify the metropolitan structural characteristics that best distinguish micro-segregation from macro-segregation for each group combination, and we decompose their effects into portions due to racial variation occurring over short and long distances. A comparison of our results with those from tract-based analyses confirms the value of the new approach.
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Multiple social contexts have been shown to affect racial attitudes both positively and negatively when considered at different levels. In this article, context is simultaneously considered at three different levels: the metropolitan area, the census block group, and the interview situation (as measured by race of interviewer/race of respondent matching). Significant effects can be classified into three categories: the effects of the racial composition of the city, the effects of the racial composition of the neighborhood, and the effects of a “differentrace” interviewer. Neighborhood income and race of interviewer effects are direct; by contrast, racial composition effects are typically cross-level interaction effects. This indicates that the modeling of cross-level interactions is essential for future studies of the effects of racial composition on attitudes.
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This study is concerned with racial/ethnic intermixing as it varies among the 49 largest U.S. MSAs in 2000 and its change over the 1990-2000 decade. Race/ethnicity is defined in terms of the major census categories of African American, American Indian, Asian, Caucasian, and Hispanic. Intermixing is calibrated by the Theil Entropy Index, which treats the five groups simultaneously and produces measures of an MSA's diversity (Diversity Score) and its level of intermixing (Entropy). The latter (Entropy) also serves as a dependent variable in regression analyses, wherein independent variables include demographic, socio-economic, and built-environment characteristics. The study departs from earlier work at the urban system level in a number of ways. First, MSAs are treated as objects of study in their own right, not simply as observational units. Second, this leads to challenging the usual practice of employing a 1/0 dummy variable to indicate the region in which an MSA is located, a practice that interferes with the emergence of other, more place-specific factors. Third, earlier studies mainly examine metropolitan areas from the perspective of two-group comparisons, rather than the multi-group comparison approach taken here. Fourth, in a major conceptual departure from earlier work, we contextualize racial/ethnic mixing and its 1990-2000 change within broader forces of economic restructuring related to the Fordist/Post-Fordist transition and broad transformational processes that invoke such concepts as inertia, sunk cost, and path dependence effects. Especially noteworthy in our findings is that MSAs that lagged in racial/ethnic intermixing in 1990 experienced the greatest change in the 1990-2000 decade, a catch-up phenomenon that we attribute to a set of widely shared norms concerning intermixing—termed the community, or social, norm premise.
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There are four major explanatory frameworks on racial/ethnic segregation and its changes: Assimilation, Stratification, Resurgent Ethnicity, and Market-Led Pluralism. Previous efforts to evaluate the significance of each framework, mainly relying on cross-urban metrics, pay less attention to intraurban residential patterning even though each framework leads to a different expectation about it. In response, this paper examines the validity of each framework in terms of intraurban segregation and changes. Following Brown and Chung's (2006) suggestion, this investigation utilizes a set of local segregation measures—Location Quotient and Local Moran's I—that shows where segregation occurs within a city. They are applied to the Columbus, Ohio MSA for 1990 and 2000. The overall findings support Resurgent Ethnicity and Market-Led Pluralism as the most relevant of the four frameworks.
Article
How common is ethnic differentiation within census tracts and what types of tracts are most likely to exhibit this tendency? This research attempts to answer these questions with block data from the 1990 U.S. census for Los Angeles County. We measured non-random unevenness in ethnic percentage within tracts for twelve ethnic populations by means of an adjusted index of dissimilarity. Of the total of 300 sampled tracts, 48% showed statistically significant differentiation at the block level. Census tracts frequently mask details of ethnic patterning, especially in transition zones between larger ethnic settlement regiorrs. Ethnic differentiation was most clearly related to block variations in housing type and cost, and tracts with fairly uniform housing were much less likely to show significant internal differentiation. Block-level differentiation was no greater for blacks than for some Asian groups and was average or low for non-Hispanic whites and people of Mexican origin.
Article
Previous studies have shown that as the percent black or percent Hispanic grows, that group’s residential segregation from whites tends to increase as well. Typically, these findings are explained in terms of white discriminatory reaction to the perceived threat associated with minority population growth. The present analysis examines whether these racial threat effects depend on the extent of racial and ethnic diversity in an area. This possibility is tested by estimating otherwise standard models of black-white and Hispanic-white segregation using metropolitan area data from the 1990 and 2000 U.S. censuses. Results from robust regression analyses strongly support the prediction for each of the white-minority pairs: the racial threat effect is significantly diminished in areas with greater multi-ethnic diversity.
Article
The central question posed in this research is whether increased educational status and associated economic gains for black Americans have been translated into greater levels of residential integration in Southern California. Some recent national investigations have shown small decreases in the levels of separation for higher-status black Americans. The research in this study strengthens those findings and strongly suggests that social class differences, as measured by income and education, are important in explaining levels of separation and that when economic and educational gains do occur, these are translated into gains in residential integration.
Article
In the wake of the Civil Rights Movement, the War on Poverty, and alterations in agriculture, the black population in the plantation regions of the American South has been redistributed. The predominant spatial trend is nucleation of a group of people that was dispersed throughout farms and plantations. Among the types of places where blacks are concentrated are municipalities in which they comprise the majority of the population. This article assesses recent spatial changes in the municipal black population in the Yazoo Delta, a nonmetropolitan region of Mississippi. At the regional scale, unequal changes in white and black municipal populations produced an increase in segregation among the municipalities of the Yazoo Delta. At the local scale, a pattern of residential desegregation has emerged in particular municipalities. This pattern is indicative of a stage in the transformation of the municipalities into ones in which the population is essentially all black. The geography of municipalities that are now predominantly black not only has been altered by movement of blacks into the previously white residential areas, but also by construction of new federally-sponsored housing and by decline and restructuring of the business district. Municipalities in which blacks comprise 75 percent or more of the population are interpreted as a new type of black ghetto. Black ghetto towns have characteristics that are similar to those of metropolitan black ghettos, including a high poverty rate, federal housing that has contributed to the concentration of a minority population, and lack of employment opportunities. Such towns are not confined to the Yazoo Delta, but are scattered across the old plantation regions of the American South. Despite their importance as spatial concentrations of a minority population, black ghetto towns are obscure places that face bleak futures.
Article
This paper discusses a new measure of residential segregation by race that incorporates spatial proximity among neighbourhoods into the calculation of the index. The basis for the measure is the Gini index of segregation. Unlike other similar measures discussed in recent years, this measure satisfies the 'principle of transfers', is flexible enough to quantify a range of pre-specified spatial patterns of segregation and is easy to compute using spatial statistics software packages. The properties of the index are illustrated using several simple simulations and a case study of non-White-White segregation in Atlanta, Georgia. The application of the index in Atlanta suggests that spatial proximity among adjacent neighbourhoods has a large impact on overall levels of racial segregation.
Article
The process of developing an adequate measure of segregation occupied the literature for over a decade and culminated in the widespread use of the Index of Dissimilarity. The inadequacies of this index, although identified by the Duncans (1955), remain with us and largely have come to be ignored. This research further explores the difficulties pertaining to limitations in the use and interpretation of the Index of Dissimilarity, demonstrates some of the systematic biases resulting from these inadequacies and provides a mathematical refinement which overcomes some of the major problems inherent in the use of this index.
Article
Most studies of urban ethnic residential patterns rely on various single-number indices to demonstrate the degree of spatial segregation. These have been criticized on a variety of grounds, and various other approaches have been proposed, including the use of measures of statistical autocorrelation and typologies of areas based on their population composition. These alternatives provide a greater geographical appreciation of segregation than the indices. It is argued here—using Auckland, New Zealand as a case study—that their integration could substantially increase our evaluation of segregation levels. (Key words: ethnic segregation, measurement, local statistics, Auckland.)
Article
This paper examines the new social division of the city cores in the metropolitan areas of Milan, Turin and Genoa. The changing structure and location of social and ethnic groups are analysed using census data from 1981 and 1991. Special emphasis is given to the relationships between de-urbanisation and social polarisation; and between urban economic restructuring and new forms of distribution or social groups. Contrary to theories of population de-urbanisation which suggest an associated decrease in social polarisation, the analysis presented in this paper demonstrates increasing levels of social division of space.
Article
This article investigates patterns of spatial assimilation of Hispanics in U.S. metropolitan areas. Using restricted-use data from the 2000 Census, we calculate Hispanics' levels of residential segregation by race and nativity and then estimate multivariate models to examine the association of group characteristics with these patterns. To obtain a more nuanced view of spatial assimilation, we use alternative reference groups in the segregation calculations-Anglos, African Americans, and Hispanics not of the same race. We find that Hispanics experience multiple and concurrent forms of spatial assimilation across generations: U.S.-born White, Black, and other-race Hispanics tend to be less segregated from Anglos, African Americans, and U.S.-born Hispanics not of the same race than are the foreign-born of the respective groups. We find some exceptions, suggesting that race continues to influence segregation despite the general strength of assimilation-related factors: Black Hispanics display high levels of segregation from Anglos, and U.S.-born Black Hispanics are no less segregated from other Hispanic groups than are their foreign-born counterparts.
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Considers the nature of the modifiable areal unit problem. A survey is made of the prevailing ambivalent attitudes that geographers display and the general absence of any sense of verisimilitude is emphasized. A critical review is made of several alternative approaches to handling the problem.-from Authors
Article
Most traditional segregation measures, such as the index of dissimilarity D, fail to distinguish spatial patterns effectively. Previously proposed spatial measures modifying D suffer from several shortcomings. This article describes a general spatial segregation index based upon the concept of composite population counts, which are derived from grouping people in neighboring areas together to account implicitly for spatial interaction of groups across unit boundaries. The suggested spatial index can overcome the disadvantages of previous indices and can assess the spatial extent of the segregated clusters. The results offer a more comprehensive depiction of spatial segregation of a region.* This project is partly funded by the Russell Sage Foundation Project #: 97–01–02
Article
A major redistribution of the black population in the Yazoo Delta in Mississippi occurred between 1940 and 1980. Almost 20 percent of the blacks now live within one mile of the corporate limits of the region's 57 municipalities. Federal housing programs that were initiated during the War on Poverty in the 1960s have been significant in the concentration of blacks in the municipal fringes. Twelve municipalities for which the political limits significantly underbound the black population were identified for detailed study. For political reasons, white-controlled municipal governments have refused to annex new black residential areas or have selectively expanded the corporate boundaries to exclude the neighborhoods. Racial discrimination in annexation has resulted in federal court suits under the Civil Rights Act and in efforts to incorporate unannexed areas as new municipalities. Municipal underbounding because of race demonstrates that race relations in the nonmetropolitan South have evolved from overt basic problems to more sophisticated spatial issues.
Article
Recent literature suggests a growing relationship between the clustering of certain visible minority groups in urban neighbourhoods and the spatial concentration of poverty in Canadian cities, raising the spectre of ghettoization. This paper examines whether urban ghettos along the U.S. model are forming in Canadian cities, using census data for 1991 and 2001 and borrowing a neighbourhood classification system specifically designed for comparing neighbourhoods in other countries to the U.S. situation. Ecological analysis is then performed in order to compare the importance of minority concentration, neighbourhood classification and housing stock attributes in improving our understanding of the spatial patterning of low-income populations in Canadian cities in 2001. The findings suggest that ghettoization along U.S. lines is not a factor in Canadian cities and that a high degree of racial concentration is not necessarily associated with greater neighbourhood poverty. On the other hand, the concentration of apartment housing, of visible minorities in general, and of a high level of racial diversity in particular, do help in accounting for the neighbourhood patterning of low income. We suggest that these findings result as much from growing income inequality within as between each visible minority group. This increases the odds of poor visible minorities of each group ending up in the lowest-cost, least-desirable neighbourhoods from which they cannot afford to escape (including social housing in the inner suburbs). By contrast, wealthier members of minority groups are more mobile and able to self-select into higher-status 'ethnic communities'. This research thus reinforces pleas for a more nuanced interpretation of segregation, ghettoization and neighbourhood dynamics. © 2006 Canadian Association of Geographers/L'Association canadienne des géographes.
Article
Although residential concentrations of immigrant ethnic groups in cities were common a century ago, it is not clear to what extent members of more recently arrived groups live near each other. We attempt to determine how common such clustered settlement is today, using 2000 census data to measure concentrations of Asians, Hispanics, and their larger ethnic subgroups in fifteen large metropolitan areas. The percentage of an ethnic group that is residentially concentrated correlated significantly with the group's proportion in an area. With metropolitan areas weighted equally, 38 percent of Hispanics and 13 percent of Asians were concentrated. However, when we analyzed eight specific nationality groups, the residentially concentrated proportion ranged from 14 to 59 percent. Level of cultural assimilation appears to explain group differences in level of concentration. Although ethnic concentrations were more pronounced in the largest metropolitan areas, important concentrations were also found in many of the smaller areas in our study.
Article
The racial threat hypothesis (Key 1949) proposes that voters of a given racial group will be politicized by the presence of a large, spatially proximate racial outgroup. Racial threat is usually operationalized by looking at variation in white voter turnout in response to the presence of African Americans. A large number of studies of racial threat have found inconsistent support for the hypothesis that white voter turnout should be positively related to the size of the proximate African American population. A number of studies have also extended the hypothesis to vote choice and examined the relationship between white voter support for African American candidates and the size of the proximate African American population. The results of these studies have also been mixed. One reason for these inconsistent findings could be confusion about the behavioral mech-anism behind racial threat. I propose a new theoretical mechanism for racial threat that derives from basic social psychology theories. This theory leads me to propose that racial threat should not only be related to the size of the proximate outgroup, but also the inter-group segregation. Another reason for the inconsistent finds might also be that different studies use data from a different times and places. Particularities of different locations and elections could affect the relationship between racial threat and white voter behavior. However, until recently, studies of racial threat had to be of a limited geographic scope because there had not been a clearly racialized candidate in a nationwide campaign. The candidacy of Barack Obama created the first explicitly racialized candidate with nationwide appeal. This allows for the first, truly nationwide measurement of racial threat. I use survey data from two nationwide surveys and aggregate election returns to show that white support for Obama has a clear, negative relationship with both the size of the prox-imate African American population and with the level of Black–white segregation. The relationship is present using both aggregate and individual-level data and the relationship remains even when other individual and contextual-level variables are controlled using mul-tivariate regression analysis. The strength of racial threat is shown to be conditioned by pre-existing racial attitudes. These findings provide some of the first nationwide evidence for racial threat and also allow for an understanding of what individual attitudes condition the relationship between racial threat and vote choice.
Article
Abstract Nonmetropolitan (nonmetro) residential segregation in 1990 and change in the preceding decade have received insufficient attention. A set of empirical hypotheses are derived and assessed using nonmetro and metropolitan (metro) counties in Texas. Places in nonmetro counties were more segregated than places in metro counties in 1990 as in 1980. Substantial declines in segregation occurred in both nonmetro and metro places but were largest in growing places in nonmetro counties. An analysis controlling for other determinants of segregation supports the premise that population change was a major determinant of 1980–1990 change in segregation. Implications for nonmetro areas in the 1990s are discussed.
Article
According to ecological theory, the socioeconomic status of a minority group is inversely related to the group's level of residential segregation from the majority group. This article determines whether the level of black socioeconomic status is related to the level of black residential segregation in the city of Detroit and Detroit's suburbs. Data were obtained from the U.S. Bureau of Census, 1990 Summary Tape Files 4-A. The methods employed to measure residential segregation were the indexes of dissimilarity D and isolation P*. Indexes were computed by census tract to measure segregation and isolation between blacks and whites at the same level of occupation, income, or education. The results revealed that residential segregation between blacks and whites remained high (i.e., above 50%) in both the city and the suburbs despite comparable socioeconomic status. Blacks in the suburbs were more segregated and isolated than blacks in the city at each socioeconomic level.
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 The measurement of segregation, the understanding of its drivers, and the effects of segregation are three interrelated issues that receive ample attention on both sides of the Atlantic. The comparative study of these subjects in Europe is not an easy task because the continent is highly fragmented and diversified. This regards the types of welfare state, but also the multitude of urban histories. Consequently, there is a lack of uniform information. Nevertheless, this paper makes an attempt to sketch the variety of ethnic and social segregation within Europe, using a large number of sources. It is shown that generally segregation levels in Europe are more moderate compared to what we can find in American cities, but these differences are not absolute. The paper also links the levels of segregation with a range of potential explanations and provides a window on European research focusing on effects of segregation.