LAUSR

Abstract:The effects of increasing levels of immigration on neighborhood change have long been examined, but questions remain about the effects of immigration on the neighborhood socioeconomic attainments of native-born families. This study draws from prior work to anticipate a residential queuing process that is triggered by immigration. Residential queuing is a social process that is driven by families striving to improve their residential circumstances in a stratified and uncertain urban landscape affected by increasing immigration. Empirically, residential queuing is evaluated over the course of two familial generations as native families respond to changing levels of exposure to foreign-born populations at the census-tract and metropolitan-area level. The results provide support for a historically established residential queuing process based on native avoidance of neighborhoods with increasing concentrations of foreign-born residents in conjunction with greater levels of upward residential mobility in metropolitan areas with increasing shares of foreign-born population. Alternative expectations from within the general queuing perspective are also evaluated: The sidestep perspective anticipates native-born families from poor, especially poor black, neighborhoods to be negatively affected by increasing metropolitan levels of foreign-born population, and the neighborhood revitalization perspective anticipates native-born families from poor neighborhoods to benefit from an increased neighborhood-level presence of immigration. The implications of these findings for immigration effects research and residential stratification are discussed.