The Effects of a Proactive, Policy-Driven Migration on Neighborhood Crime

• In Event: 4155 - Section on Crime, Law, and Deviance Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 10. Neighborhoods and Mobility

Abstract

In present day America, anti-immigration policies and rhetoric are often driven by perceptions that immigrants are especially prone to criminogenic behavior, resulting in serious and sometimes harmful consequences for immigrants and their families. Research on this topic focuses on immigration, overall, or specifically on Latino immigration. Few studies have examined the relationship between non-Latino immigrants and crime, leaving doors open for challenges to the generalizability of any findings. The proposed research seeks to be one of the few studies to examine the effects of non-Latino immigration and the first research to examine Guyanese migration on neighborhood crime rates. Using census-based data and crime point data, I will examine the impact of the change in the number of Guyanese nationals in the City of Schenectady, New York by census tract on violent crime rates between 2000-2014. Consistent with the immigrant revitalization perspective, I hypothesize that as the Guyanese population increases within city census tracts, crime decreases. [Analysis pending]

Author

• Tyler Bellick, State University of New York at Albany