Collaborative Research: Enclaves, Labor Markets, and the Locational Choices of U.S. Immigrants in Economic Boom and Bust

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The foreign-born share of the U.S. population has risen to almost a record proportion, 12.6 percent in 2007. Immigrants to the U.S. increasingly are settling outside California and other traditional gateway states. In the last 20 years, immigrant populations have grown rapidly in the South and Midwest, regions that previously had been relatively untouched by the upswing in immigration that began half a century ago. Population growth in these areas stemmed from natural increase but more importantly from the in-migration of the native born. The credit-fueled boom that drew many immigrants to these new locations now has fizzled. Migration behavior also has changed. Fewer people (both immigrants and native-born) are migrating across state lines. Immigration also has slowed. Some states that had experienced rapid population growth now are facing population declines. This research project will document the settlement patterns of foreign-born immigrants within the country and compare them to the native-born population. The investigators will look specifically at US-born and foreign-born migration systems within the U.S. and are especially interested in analyzing how these two systems change over time, with a particular emphasis on the economic crisis of 2008-2010. They will compare the movement of immigrants within the US with movements of U.S.-born people in the context of the recent recession, with special emphasis given to determining whether foreign-born and U.S.-born workers respond to labor market signals in the same way. The investigators will test the hypothesis that immigrants will migrate within the U.S. in response to local economic crises in ways much like U.S.-born workers, leaving areas of high unemployment for areas with better job prospects. They also will seek to determine whether immigrants will be more reluctant to leave immigrant enclaves and that they will be drawn to these enclaves when they do move.By examining how migrants respond to the pull of enclaves of people from the same ethnic group and the geography of employment opportunities, by considering how these responses vary by skill and education level as well as by ethnic group, and by considering how migration behavior may differ in more recent economic hard times from what occurred in the generally prosperous era of the 1990s, the investigators will address a core theoretical tension between the geography of labor markets and ethnic enclaves as drivers of migration systems. The project's intellectual merit of this research will result from the measurement of their effects on immigrant internal migration across the economic cycle. Positive broader impacts will include the frequent and timely release of information on the evolving settlement geography and employment of immigrants during this recession and its aftermath through both scholarly and more applied media. The project also will provide education and training opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students and a postdoctoral researcher.