Immigrant Dispersion: Who’s Moving to New Destinations and Why?

Mary M. Kritz, Cornell University
Douglas T. Gurak, Cornell University

Two unsettled questions are addressed: whether foreign-born dispersion to new destinations is driven primarily by secondary migrations or by recent immigrants arriving from abroad; and how the socio-economic, origin and racial characteristics of migrants moving to new destinations differ. The analysis uses the 5-year ACS confidential file for 2005-2009. New destinations are defined for 741 local geographic areas based on national origin growth and dispersion tendencies. OLS regression is used to assess whether immigrant's spatial dispersion to new destinations follows the classical assimilation pathway that held for European immigrants in the previous century or segmented assimilation theory. The research findings uphold classic theory for most immigrants but also indicate that some immigrants who are dispersing do not fit that profile. National origin has a stronger effect than race on dispersion. The analysis confirms that it is important to take origin heterogeneity into account in immigration studies.