Group Boundaries in New York and Chicago, 1900-1920

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This is a study of the residential and labor force positions of ethnic and racial groups in this country's two largest cities, New York and Chicago, in the period 1900-1920. This was the high point of European immigration into both cities, and it also included the first wave of large-scale migration of Southern blacks to the North. Discussions of this historical period, like those of the current time, attempt to assess the degree to which these groups experienced a process of assimilation into the mainstream or, alternatively, created or were confronted by enduring group boundaries. The principal questions involve the degree to which blacks and/or the main immigrant groups - Germans, Irish, Italians, Russians, and Poles - were segregated into specific neighborhoods and occupational niches, and the extent of their mobility over the life cycle and across generations. To examine residential patterns, previously untapped data on the racial and ethnic composition of census tracts of both cities in 1920 will be used. Newly released census data files for individuals (the 1920 IPUMS files), which include people's address and census enumeration district, will be linked to these tract data, making possible the estimation of individual-level models of residential attainment. To examine labor force patterns, the IPUMS files will be analyzed in terms of occupational clustering and segregation, levels of occupational standing, and the existence of ethnic economies based on concentrated group ownership and employment in certain sectors. A unique feature of the study is the tracing of a random sample of 4000 of the 1920 residents of each city to 1900 census records. This will allow evaluation of assimilation and group boundaries to be based on analyses of occupational and residential mobility over time for a representative sample of the population including both men and women. This study not only contributes to an improved understanding of the history of American cities, but it also will test specific hypotheses about the origins of contemporary urban segregation and general theories about the social processes by which groups may come to be separated and experience different histories of mobility.