How Social Ties Shape Residential Migration and Mobility Outcomes for Low-Income Families

• In Event: 105 - Section on Sociology of Population Paper Session. Spatial Stratification

Abstract

Why, when given the opportunity to move from high- to low-poverty neighborhoods, do some low-income families return to disadvantaged contexts? Drawing on a longitudinal dataset of low- income Hurricane Katrina survivors, I leverage the storm as an exogenous shock to study neighborhood selection processes directly. In contrast to extant literature that relegates social networks to the periphery, I highlight the centrality of social relationships for neighborhood sorting. More than focusing on the presence, absence, or location of a social tie, my iterative and mixed-method analysis reveals that the nature of distinct social relationships induces divergent neighborhood poverty outcomes for this sample. When social relations provide useful information or help that reduces the costs, or increases the expected benefits, associated with moving to opportunity, reductions in neighborhood poverty are possible. When social relations impose normative pressures to discourage families’ moves to opportunity neighborhoods, increases in tract-level poverty are likely. This analysis urges scholars and policymakers to reassess the social processes underlying low-income families’ neighborhood attainment.

Author

• Asad L. Asad, Harvard University