Declining Segregation within Six Major Asian Groups and the Geographic Shift from City to Suburb

• In Event: 449 - Regular Session. Asians in Systems of Ethnic Stratification

Abstract

With the growth of Asian population, the diversity within Asian population grows substantially. Past studies on residential patterns and spatial assimilation often treat Asian Americans as one racial group. The current study examines the extent of segregation within the six major Asian subgroups and how much the within-group segregation contributes to the estimation of the overall Asian-white segregation. The paper then assesses city and suburban components in each group’s segregation to understand the role of suburbanization. Analyses based on the census tract data from 1970 to 2010 show that although the within-group segregation has declined over decades, it remained at a relatively high level. The paper also reports that that for each of the major Asian groups residents in suburb are becoming more segregated from whites compared to the counterparts in cities. Furthermore, due to the high rates of suburbanization among Asian groups, the group-white segregation in suburban locations is taking more weights in contributing to the total segregation.

Author

• Weiwei Zhang, Brown University