New Faces in Rural Places: Patterns and Correlates of Non-metropolitan Ethnoracial Diversity Since 1990

• In Event: 248 - Regular Session. Rural Sociology 2: Diversity, Inequalities, and Attainments in Rural Places

Abstract

Like their metropolitan counterparts, many nonmetropolitan communities have become more racially and ethnically diverse in recent decades. Much of the research on nonmetro diversity is of the case study variety, describing how the arrival of Hispanics transforms or impacts a particular place. To complement the insights from this work, we conceptualize diversity along two dimensions—magnitude and structure—which are measured for a sample of 10,000 nonmetro places. Our analysis of 1990-2010 decennial census and American Community Survey data, framed by spatial assimilation and locational persistence perspectives, documents a pervasive upward trend in diversity magnitude. However, the vast majority of places retain the same basic ethnoracial structure in 2010 that they exhibited 20 years earlier. We also find that Mexicans are now a smaller yet still dominant share of the Hispanic population driving local diversity change, and that minority groups other than Hispanics can shape diversity. Based on estimates from a series of fixed effects regression models, ethnoracial diversity gains tend to be most likely in nonmetro communities with plentiful economic opportunities and growing total, foreign-born, and correctional (prison) populations. These correlates of diversity hold for places inside and outside of micropolitan areas and in all four census-defined regions.

Authors

• Gregory Sharp, University at Buffalo, SUNY

• Barrett Lee, Pennsylvania State University